Tainted-Water Scare Brings Flood of Salesmen to Hacienda Heights

The salesman drew water from the kitchen faucet into a test tube, added a few drops of a solution and watched as a sediment separated and fell to the bottom. The test, he insisted, was proof that the water was unfit to drink.

At first, John Nakamura, in whose kitchen the salesman was demonstrating his product, was impressed.

The test showed “a lot of crud” in the tap water, Nakamura said, but how, he wondered later, could he determine if it really meant anything? Nakamura said that a second test, in which the salesman timed how long it took an additive to turn the tap water blue because of contaminants, was more confusing than persuasive.

In the end, Nakamura decided not to buy the $3,000 treatment system that the salesman said would clean up his tap water.

“If everything the salesman said is true, it’s probably a good deal,” Nakamura said afterward. But, “I’d have to know a lot more.”

What Nakamura heard was “pure snake oil,” according to a Metropolitan Water District water quality expert. The salesman’s water purification system was either overpriced or more sophisticated than necessary, the expert said, and the demonstrations were proof of nothing.

Nakamura was entertaining the idea of spending $3,000 for a treatment system only because state health officials had declared late last month that the tap water in his Hacienda Heights neighborhood was contaminated with a volatile organic chemical, dichloroethylene, a suspected carcinogen.

The San Gabriel Valley Water Co., at the direction of the state Deparment of Health Services, notified 5,300 customers on Sept. 30 that they should use bottled water for drinking and cooking.

But over the weekend, the health department reversed its position.

Stanley Cubanski, chief deputy director of the state Department of Health Services, said his department is in the process of mailing notices to explain that the contaminant level is so low--less than 1.3 parts per billion of water--that any cancer risk is “almost impossible to calculate.” Cubanski said the first notice suggesting the use of bottled water “overstated what should be done.”

“We should have sent a less hysterical notice,” he said. “We’re now in a situation of damage control.”

The first health notice prompted hundreds of families to order bottled water and flooded the neighborhood with salesmen for all sorts of water purification devices, ranging from $50 faucet attachments to systems costing thousands of dollars.

“It’s been an absolute zoo,” said Wilfred Baca, a director of the Hacienda Heights Improvement Assn. Neighborhood shopping centers have been inundated with bottled water trucks driven by salesmen eager to sign up customers. Flyers promoting water purificiation devices and spreading alarm about the water “crisis” have been put on car windshields and handed out door-to-door, and residents have been besieged with calls from salesmen.

Clem Wachner, communications director for Sparkletts Drinking Water Corp., said his company has sent salesmen into the neighborhood and picked up “hundreds of new orders.”

And, he said, the news from the health department that the water is now regarded as safe to drink is not likely to result in many cancellations.

A few years ago, people would order water during a contamination scare and then drop the service when alarm subsided, he said. But water quality has become such a continuing concern that new subscribers are “staying with us” even after an emergency has passed.

Michael Whitehead, vice president and general counsel of San Gabriel Valley Water Co., said he fears that some residents are being pressured by salesmen into buying expensive water treatment systems that are of doutbful value. “People are being inundated with sales pitches,” he said.

Carolyn Fahnestock, executive director of the Pacific Water Quality Assn., a trade association that represents 165 water treatment dealers, said the field has attracted get-rich-quick salesmen who know nothing about water treatment systems.

“There are people out there putting clamps around pipes,” she said, explaining that a salesman might tell a worried housewife a complicated story about “magnetic” techniques for pulling toxic substances out of the water. But what it amounts to, she said, is magic.

Most home water treatment systems cost $100 to $600, Fahnestock said. Any system that costs more than $1,000 is either designed for commercial use or involves something other than water purification, she said.

Fahnestock said water treatment companies rush into neighborhoods during reports of water contamination because they have a product that can solve the problem, but it is up to the customer to separate the legitimate dealers from fly-by-night operators.

“There is zero regulation of the industry,” said Michael McGuire, water quality manager for the Metropolitan Water District. “It’s buyer beware.”

McGuire said the only home water treatment systems that can remove organic chemicals, such as DCE, use carbon filters, and the systems work only as long as they are serviced regularly. Carbon filters that are not periodically replaced can accumulate bacteria that can go into the water and be as harmful as the chemicals the system is supposed to remove, he said.

Gary Yamamoto, senior sanitary engineer for the state Department of Health Services, said an alternative method of removing DCE is to boil the water. But, he said, in this case there is a complication from nitrate contamination. Prolonged boiling removes DCE, but also can increase the nitrate concentration to a level where it can have a harmful effect on babies and pregnant women.

It was Yamamoto who instructed the San Gabriel Valley Water Co. to advise its customers to purchase bottled water temporarily because of DCE contamination. Cubanski said the advisory should have been cleared with Kenneth Kizer, the state health director, but was not. Cubanski said the public should have been informed about the DCE contamination, but also should have been told that there was no imminent danger to public health.

Yamamoto acted because tests in August showed that water being delivered to customers contained more DCE than is permitted under state action level standards. The action level is 0.2 parts per billion, but concentrations reached as high as 1.3 parts per billion.

The state detected DCE in two of the five wells serving Hacienda Heights last March, but the water company was able to close one well and blend water so that the DCE concentration was below the action level until August. The high summer demand for water forced the company to put its most contaminated well back in service in August, raising DCE concentrations above the state level.

The water company is drilling a new, deeper well, which officials said should be in service in three to four weeks.

In canceling the advice to drink bottled water, state health officials in Sacramento noted that the federal Environmental Protection Agency is reevaluating the health risk from DCE and is proposing a new standard of 7 parts per billion.

Cubanski said the amount of DCE in Hacienda Heights tap water is so low that one would have to drink two quarts of it a day for 70 years to incur a cancer risk above 1 in 1 million. And, even at that, since 250,000 out of every million people (one in four) can expect to contract cancer according to American Cancer Society estimates, the effect would only be to push the number of cancer victims to 250,001.

An EPA report in 1983 noted that there had been eight studies in which dichloroethylene had been administered to rats, mice and hamsters. Animals developed cancer in only one of the studies. The EPA report said the chemical is used in a packaging film, in the manufacture of textile fibers and in flame-retardant carpet backing. The report says DCE may find its way into ground water from waste products buried in dump sites.

Sandy Johnson, a leader in the fights Hacienda Heights homeowners are waging against expansion of the Puente Hills landfill, said residents are seeking independent monitoring of the dump to determine whether DCE or other chemicals have leaked out. Other leaders in the Hacienda Heights committee against the dump have suggested that BKK landfill in West Covina, the former dump that exists under the Industry Hills convention center or other abandoned dumps might be a source.

Johnson said the health department’s handling of the water contamination problem has proven only that “they are inept.”

“I’ve never seen anything hit people like this,” she said. “All my neighbors are furious.”

One resident, Bill Cressman, criticized the water company and health department for taking so long to notify residents of the contamination, and then rescinding the recommendation to stop drinking tap water.

“Why would they come back and say it’s OK now when they haven’t done anything to the water?” he asked.

Alice Cowley said she, too, was puzzled by the reassessment. She said, “I figure that if it’s severe enough for them to put out a warning, I don’t want to drink it.”

She said she bought bottled water and has been tempted to send the bill for it to her water company. Others have suggested withholding payments.

Whitehead said the water company charges only for the water that is used and there is no basis for withholding payment. He said the water company is spending $200,000 to drill a new well.

Whitehead said the health department’s handling of the problem has left customers understandably confused. The water company’s job now, he said, “is to solve the problem and regain the confidence of our customers.”