Department of Water Resources
A daily compilation of significant news articles and comment
June 3, 2008
4. Water Quality –
City wants polluter to treat well
By Natalie Everett, staff writer
Water consumers can look forward to a 5 percent surcharge reduction starting July 1, if the proposed city budget is passed by the council in coming weeks.
The move, which would lower the surcharge fee from 15 to 10 percent, would save the median single-family residential user about $1.05 a month.
But city officials would rather not tack on a surcharge at all. They've asked the California State Water Resources Control Board (SWRCB) to get Olin Corp., the company that leaked perchlorate into the city's well source for possibly decades, to pay for one well's treatment and overall more stringent groundwater cleanup.
One of the city petition's four requests is that the SWRCB order Olin to incorporate Tennant Well in its cleanup plans, thereby passing the buck from the city's ratepayers to Olin. If this happened, the surcharge could be reduced even further, City Manager Ed Tewes said.
In 2000, Olin Corp. officials discovered they had been leaking perchlorate into the groundwater at their
The salt can cause thyroid problems and infants and pregnant women are especially susceptible. Other health problems are suspected.
Olin produced signal flares from 1956 to 1995 on the 13-acre property located at
Perchlorate is a common contaminant, found in many drinking water sources across
The perchlorate surcharge pays for the city's legal fees as well as treatment costs and was first tacked onto bills in April 2004 as a 5 percent perchlorate surcharge. It was raised to 10 percent in January 2006, and then to 15 percent in January 2007. The Nordstrom Well's perchlorate levels are under the state-mandated 6 parts per billion (ppb) so it is no longer treated, saving the city tens of thousands of dollars a year. So the surcharge can be reduced, Tewes said.
By 2011, city officials expect to have spent more than $5 million on perchlorate, largely paid for by the surcharge to water customers, according to projections in the proposed city budget.
The median single family residential user pays about $3.17 toward the surcharge each month, over their usual $21.10 water bill. If the surcharge goes through, the same household will pay about $2.11 toward the surcharge.
The Tennant Well contributes 450 gallons per minute to the city's production of 219 million gallons yearly water use. There are 13 total wells in use in
The water delivered to city customers is exclusively groundwater pumped from a network of wells around the city, which draw water from the
The state board has until late September to respond to the petition.
In the meantime, the petition has generated feedback from Olin and the Central Coast Water Quality Control Board that contains biting criticism of what they call
The regional board contends that Olin is doing enough. It also asserts that because the Tennant Well is so close to the old Olin site where perchlorate is believed to lie dormant, pumping the Tennant Well could pull more perchlorate into the city's water.
"The water board has alerted the city from the beginning that by pumping the Tennant Well, if the problem is exacerbated, the city could be held liable in the future," said Hector Hernandez, the regional water board's Olin site project manager.
Olin's response has been that
Both request the state water control board deny the petition.
"They've essentially said, 'we know it's in your drinking water but don't worry about it,'" City Manager Ed Tewes said. "But we do worry about it."
Hernandez said the regional board orders Olin to install extraction wells to pull perchlorate from the shallow, medium and deep aquifers, which they have done. The extraction wells will become operational by the end of 2009, he said. But Tewes contends that because those wells are only located at the perchlorate plume's hot spots in San Martin, the cleanup order doesn't solve Morgan Hill's perchlorate problems.
Councilman Larry Carr agrees.
"We haven't said they're criminals, but they should be held responsible for this," Carr said. "(Perchlorate) will continue to get into the groundwater."
Hernandez said it's not the regional board's purview to decide whether Olin should 'refund' the city's cleanup fees since the contamination was discovered.
"That's for the discharger and other entities to work out," he said. "Our position is to not take a stance on that. We are requiring Olin to implement cleanup in a reasonable time frame, and Olin is doing what we've asked them to do. We don't have any legal reason to get involved."
Carr said that because the region doesn't have much industry, the regional board isn't experienced with issues like these.
"They're not clear on what their authorities are, and what they can do to clean up a basin for a community," Carr said.
Andria Ventura, program manager for San Francisco-based Clean Water Action, said Morgan Hill and surrounding communities are lucky, in a way, that Olin stepped up to the plate a little bit.
"Olin should be commended for being part of the solution," she said. "But it's not clear to me that they're doing everything possible to mitigate the problem."
"Under
Dave Clegern, spokesman for the SWCRB, said companies fight hard to not be held accountable because they don't want their actions in one place to set a precedent.
"It's bigger than one community," he said. "It affects their bottom line. If that company happens to have similar problems elsewhere, it will affect their liability elsewhere."
Clegern said
"The cities that go to bat, that see these problems as important, are doing the right thing," he said.
Carr said the city's water needs are only stressed further during the summer months, when the peak water use months coincide with the fire season.
"The huge Summit Fire is a great reminder that we have to run all our pumps during the summertime," Carr said. "If there's any kind of fire threat, filter or not, we can't let houses burn down because there's perchlorate in the water."
Councilman Mark Grzan said Olin should be held responsible for cleaning up the groundwater from not only when they discovered the perchlorate in 2000, and before that, too.
"They were discharging into an earthen dam that's known to not be reliable (for containment) and had perchlorate filtering into the earth - how could that not become commingled with our water supply?" Grzan said. "It's just unbelievable. I think Olin is egregiously responsible not just for what the level is today, but also years ago when the plant was fully operational."
If the state water control board feels no sympathy for
"Our advice from our attorney is that that would be an extremely costly endeavor, and one that wouldn't get us the results that we'd be looking for," Carr said. "I don't like that we have to spend money because of this private industry and their actions. But it has been money well spent to protect the ratepayers of
http://www.morganhilltimes.com/news/244603-city-wants-polluter-to-treat-well
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