Treated Water From Acid Pits Can Go in Orange County Sewers

The federal Environmental Protection Agency was given permission Thursday to dump treated ground water from the Stringfellow acid pits into Orange County’s sewer system after test samples showed only minute traces of heavy metals, authorities said.

Pending verification of results today, an estimated 40,000 gallons of carbon-filtered ground water could begin flowing into the Orange County sewer system by early afternoon, a regional water authority official said Thursday.

“We’re ready to go,” said J. Andrew Schlange, general manager of the Santa Ana Watershed Project Authority, which represents water districts in Riverside, San Bernardino and Orange counties. “I will sign the permit in the morning if everything checks out.”

The permit must also be approved by the County Sanitation Districts of Orange County--an action expected today.

The approval would allow the EPA to start up a long-delayed treatment plant at the former industrial waste dump in Riverside County and dispose of the effluent into Orange County’s main sewer line.

Toxic water is now being pumped from the Stringfellow site and poisoned ground water supplies nearby, then taken by truck to the Casmalia hazardous waste disposal site in northern Santa Barbara County.

However, the Casmalia site will be closed Saturday to any further liquid wastes.

EPA officials have been scrambling to get the $4.3-million treatment plant in operation, and Thursday’s approval means there would be no interruption of efforts to halt a spreading plume of contaminants, which threatens the underground water supply of 40,000 Southern Californians living near the acid pits.

Initial Outcry

When plans to send water from Stringfellow through Orange County sewers were first announced, they provoked an outcry from some residents and the Orange County Board of Supervisors, which had unsuccessfully demanded an environmental impact study.

On Thursday, federal and local officials said repeatedly that Stringfellow water would be treated to near drinking water standards and would be monitored daily before dumping.

“The water is going to be treated to very stringent standards by the terms of the permit, but in practice we’ll be able to get it below even the permit limits,” said Keith Takata, head of the EPA’s Superfund program for the western region.

“We will have one of our own industrial waste inspectors on site verifying the treated waste water before it is released into the system,” said Corinne Clawson, public information officer for the sanitation agency, which processes 232 million gallons of sewage daily.

Treated Stringfellow water would be further cleansed at the Sanitation Districts plant in Huntington Beach before it is discharged from an ocean outfall five miles offshore, Clawson said.

The plant is expected to generate about 30,000 gallons of treated water daily, but that could be increased during wet weather. It was built to handle a capacity of 187,000 gallons daily.

The treated water would be trucked several miles away to sewer intake lines for the Santa Ana Regional Interceptor, a giant sewer line paralleling the Santa Ana River.

This method was projected to shave $600,000 off the $1.7-million annual cost for the ground water cleanup.

The plant at Stringfellow, located in Pyrite Canyon near Glen Avon in western Riverside County, was to have started operation last January.

Design Changes

But the opening was delayed by design changes, including a move to double the plant’s capacity, as well as technical problems and the transfer of plant management from the state to the EPA.

In one half of the plant, ground water is filtered through activated carbon to remove organic chemicals such as industrial solvents. Since that portion was started up Monday, 40,000 gallons have been processed and were being stored in two tanks at the site.

In the remaining part of the plant, expected to start sometime next week, lime precipitate will be used to dissolve heavy metals such as chromium and cadmium from water pumped directly from the Stringfellow dump site.

Takata said lab results received Thursday were unable to “detect either heavy metals or organic” compounds. “We get very clean water,” he said.

Schlange said a second test sample turned up trace amounts of chromium and cadmium that were well below permit standards. Cadmium measured .025 parts per million, or less than half the permitted maximum of .064 parts per million. Chromium measured .032 parts per million, well below the maximum 2 parts per million allowable, he said.

Takata said organic compounds cannot exceed .58 parts per million; none was detected in the samples, he said.

“The water that will be delivered to our system will . . . be well within any limits or it won’t be dumped,” said Schlange, adding, “it actually will be better than normal sewage coming down that line.”