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Contamination of Water Systems Growing, Official Says

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Times Staff Writer

Pollution of California’s ground-water systems is far more serious and more widespread than anyone guessed, and government is ill-equipped to deal with the magnitude of the problem, a state health official said Wednesday.

Peter Rodgers, chief of sanitary engineering for the state Department of Health Services, said there is a “consistent pattern” of organic contaminants turning up in 25% of the state’s large water-supply systems.

“We are finding chemicals in areas where we never expected to find them,” Rodgers told a conference of California water agency engineers and managers in Anaheim on Wednesday. “We are being besieged almost daily.”

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He said no one is certain how much of a hazard the 133 chemical pollutants being found pose to public health.

Yet Rodgers suggested the threat to public health may not be as great as assumed, particularly when balanced against the estimated billions of dollars of cleanup costs.

“If you drink two liters of water a day containing five parts per billion of trichlorethylene (TCE), you have a one-in-a-million chance of getting cancer,” Rodgers said.

Pointing to recently published crime statistics, he said, “The odds of being murdered are one in 133--so the odds of being murdered are 10,000 times greater than of getting cancer by drinking water contaminated with TCE.”

Government is ill-equipped to deal with the magnitude of the ground-water pollution problem that is being found, in part, Rodgers said, because the state lacks enforcement standards for 127 of the 133 chemicals being found. He said the costs remained prohibitively high for cleanup and the emphasis has to be put on prevention.

Rodgers, one the state’s top experts on water quality issues, said that under a bill sponsored by Assemblyman Lloyd G. Connelly (D-Sacramento), 833 large water systems in California are being evaluated for evidence of contamination. In test results of 400 of those systems now in, organic pollutants have been found in 260 of about 1,500 wells tested.

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Rodgers said 30 of those wells have been shut down because of excessive pollution levels.

There are about 1,000 large water systems in the state and about 9,000 smaller ones, he said.

“If we are finding it in the large water systems, then it is bound to be everywhere,” Rodgers said.

“The public is already stirred up about toxic wastes in general and this seems to be adding to their alarm,” he said.

Rodgers warned the local water agency officials to be prepared for a virtual avalanche of enforcement regulations from state and federal governments. He noted that Gov. George Deukmejian has proposed spending $5 million to develop enforcement standards for 40 of those chemicals in 36 months. He said the Assembly Ways and Means Committee wants to do all 127 in one year.

Rodgers said he recognized that regulations would add to the costs of already financially strapped local water agencies.

James Anderson, executive officer of the state Water Quality Control Board-Santa Ana Region, likened the water agencies to “men with hen-pecking wives.”

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Both Rodgers and Anderson said the state is trying to shoulder some of the excess costs.

But Rodgers said there is not enough money to go around. A bond issue for $75 million approved to help strapped local water agencies finance capital improvements is only a “drop in the bucket” against the need, Rodgers said. He said $850 million would be needed just to finance the requests of the more than 1,000 agencies seeking financial assistance.

Darlene Ruiz, a newly appointed member of the state Water Resources Control Board, said that as part of the effort to learn the extent of the problem of ground-water pollution, special hearings will be held in the next 60 to 90 days in Southern California.

Pollutants Found in Wells

In Orange County, tests of 54 key wells in the Orange County Water District basin have turned up traces of organic pollutants in 12 wells. Water District Manager Neil Cline said a second test failed to confirm the results, so a third series of tests is being conducted.

OCWD serves 1.9 million residents living over the ground-water basin that encompasses most of northern, western and central Orange County.

Seventy percent of the drinking water comes from the ground-water supplies. The remainder is purchased from the Metropolitan Water District.

Cline said there is some indication that agricultural wastewater runoff can be responsible for the traces of pollutants seen in the early testing. In addition, he said the water quality is impaired by the nation’s largest concentration of dairy farms, which are located in the Chino-Corona area of Riverside County. Those dairy farms produce the equivalent sewage runoff of 1.8 million residents, he said.

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Monitoring Ineffective

To date, monitoring of ground-water supplies with wells downstream has not been very effective in detecting pollution.

Anderson said downstream wells failed to detect underground seepage of highly toxic metals and chemicals from the Stringfellow Acid Pits near the Riverside County community of Glen Avon.

“By the time we find it, it’s too late to do much about it,” he said.

Even when pollution is detected, Anderson said, it is difficult to trace the contaminants to their source. He cited a two-year search for the source of TCE found in four primary wells of one city in San Bernardino County that has so far produced no results. Anderson did not name the city.

“Part of Anaheim now looks like Swiss cheese because of all the wells that were sunk to find a source of gasoline” that contaminated the city’s drinking water supplies two years ago, Anderson said.

Cost Is High

A Mobil Oil distribution terminal in Anaheim discovered it had lost more than 37,000 gallons of gasoline into the soil below the tank. Several months later, traces of hydrocarbons found in gasoline were detected in monitoring wells within a few miles of the terminal. The cleanup is progressing, and Mobil officials have projected total costs to pump out polluted water and treat it, as well as to excavate contaminated soil, could run in excess of several million dollars.

One city water well remains shut down because of the contamination. However, Anaheim city officials say none of the spilled gasoline has gotten into the regular water supply.

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New state requirements for registration, testing and permitting of underground storage tanks raise the prospect that even greater amounts of leaking pollutants will be discovered, officials said.

Anderson noted that any tank owner or operator who discovers a leak into the soil or into the ground-water supplies is now required to report the discharge.

Listeners Frustrated

Members of the audience seemed frustrated by the bleak picture painted. Robert Clark of Fountain Valley, a member of the OCWD board of directors, criticized the state for failing to provide an adequate number of safe disposal sites for toxic wastes in Southern California.

“There are seven to 11 kinds of agencies to enforce the regulations, but no one helps anyone to dispose of this stuff--and we’re getting all kinds of clandestine dumping down here,” said Clark, who is also chairman of the Santa Ana River Watershed Project Authority, a tri-county agency that manages the Santa Ana River basin.

“This is not so much a political problem as a practical one,” he said, referring to the objections most communities raise at the prospect of having toxic waste sites in their neighborhoods. “Give a guy a place to dump this stuff so it doesn’t end up in our water.”

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