Toxins Harm O.C. Water, Suit Alleges

The Orange County Water District has sued a group of mostly large industrial manufacturers that it contends has failed to clean up toxic chemicals that have seeped into the ground and threaten the water supply for more than 2 million residents.

Though none of the chemicals was detected in county drinking water, routine monitoring near former industrial sites in Fullerton and Anaheim turned up traces of the solvent perchloroethylene, or PCE, a suspected carcinogen.

The solvent was found in a shallow aquifer -- an underground reservoir where water collects -- that feeds a much deeper basin from which drinking water is drawn.

“The responsible parties have not stepped up, and we don’t want the average water user in Orange County to have to pay for something that they did not do,” said Ron Wildermuth, water district spokesman.

The suit, filed Dec. 17 in Orange County Superior Court, seeks tens of millions of dollars in damages to purify the water and cleanse the soil -- a job the lawsuit says will take a decade.

Among those named in the lawsuit are Northrop Grumman Corp. -- the nation’s third-largest military contractor -- MAG Aerospace Industries Inc., Mark IV Industries, AeroJet-General Corp. and Fullerton Business Park LLC. Most of the companies named have operated warehouses and manufacturing plants in the area since the 1960s.

Joe Matrange, president of Placentia-based AC Products Inc., said he had not been served with the suit and was caught off guard by the allegations.

He said the company had been cooperating for years with the water district and the regional water quality control board, operating two treatment wells and 30 monitoring wells to help protect the underground water supply. “Everything’s done at our expense,” Matrange said. “So I’m somewhat surprised about this suit.”

Other company representatives, many of whom also said they had not been served yet, declined to comment on the lawsuit.

Officials with the regional water quality control board, which investigates and facilitates cleanup of contaminated sites, said Orange County was dotted with former industrial sites that contained hazardous wastes left over from the manufacturing and aerospace boom of the late 1950s.

At the time, they said, little was known about the potential harm of many widely used solvents and chemicals such as PCE, commonly used by dry cleaners and as a metal degreaser.

“It was an accepted practice to just dump wastes on the ground,” said Kurt Berchtold, assistant executive officer for the Santa Ana Regional Water Quality Control Board. “It was not understood very well that there was potential for these chemicals dumped onto the ground [to] affect groundwater and drinking-water supplies.”

Decades later, traces of PCE have been found in drinking wells throughout the state. Two years ago, the South Coast Air Quality Management District banned the chemical, which can pollute both air and water. Air quality officials required businesses to phase out its use by 2020, saying PCE posed an unacceptably high cancer risk.

State and federal drinking water standards for the chemical are 5 parts per billion, which is roughly equal to five drops of water in an Olympic-sized swimming pool.

Though most pollution enforcement is carried out by the regional board, the water district has in a few instances taken companies to court. In 2003, the district went up against major oil companies in a suit over MTBE, another likely carcinogen. The case is ongoing.

District officials view the PCE contamination as a similar threat. Sandier soils in northern Orange County -- where the firms named in the suit are located -- make any contamination all the more threatening to water resources in Orange County, officials said, because chemicals can quickly travel through porous surfaces.

Of the roughly dozen chemicals named in the complaint, PCE and trichloroethylene, known as TCE, are the most prevalent. The compounds readily dissolve in water and spread into groundwater, remaining in water reservoirs for long periods of time and eventually ruining them, water district officials said.

In the San Gabriel Valley, high levels of PCE and TCE caused several water wells to be shut down in the early 1990s.

Orange County draws 60% of its drinking water from underground basins.

Although the regional water board has persuaded some of the companies named in the suit to participate in site cleanups in recent years, the Orange County Water District said more needs to be done.

“They’ve been pointing fingers at each other, and we’re going to get them all in the same corral and make sure the problem is taken care of,” said Michael Axline, attorney for the district.

The lawsuit alleges that the companies knowingly put drinking water supplies at risk by failing to contain spills and leaks of on-site storage drums and tanks.

“This conduct is reprehensible, despicable and was performed in conscious disregard for the known risks of injury to health and property,” water district attorneys wrote.

In addition to paying for any necessary cleanup, the suit asks companies to help fund more studies to determine how far the pollution has spread.

“It could take many years to clean it out of the ground and the water,” said the water district’s Wildermuth. “It’s not a short-term project.”