Polluted Wells Put Agua Dulce Landowners’ Dreams on Hold

For two years, Roger Curie had been planning to build what he calls “the house I want to die in.”

It was to have been a gracious English Tudor home on five acres of land at the end of Canyon Quail Trail in rural Agua Dulce, a spread-out hamlet east of Magic Mountain that is a haven for people trying to flee such urban irritations as street lights and noise.

His plans were approved. His water well was dug and his lot graded. Construction was about to start, Curie said. But now, his house is on hold. So are the new homes or businesses of 37 other property owners, and a proposed 49-home tract in which a developer has invested $2 million.

No New Permits for Septic Tanks

After discovering that some water wells in Agua Dulce contained rising levels of nitrates--a component of sewage and fertilizer that can pose a risk to infants--the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services decided last week to stop issuing new permits for septic tanks, which might be the source of the pollution.

Preliminary tests of water from 17 county-controlled wells in Agua Dulce showed that five already exceeded the state limit for nitrates and two were “on the verge” of passing the limit, said Jack Petralia, rural director of environmental protection for the health department.

But more disturbing, he said, were indications that nitrate concentrations had increased by a third in the past three years. No new permits can be issued until a comprehensive study of the area’s ground water is undertaken, he said. The county’s legal office has said there can be no exceptions.

Risk to Infants’ Health

Nitrates pose a clearly established risk to the health of babies up to the age of about 6 months, said Dr. Richard Jackson, a pediatrician in the Hazards Evaluation Section of the state Department of Health Services.

High nitrate levels in water used to make infant formula have been associated with high incidence of the “blue baby syndrome,” Jackson said. The ability of blood to carry oxygen is reduced in these infants. After the sixth month of life, though, an infant’s digestive system changes, neutralizing the nitrates’ effect.

In adults, there is some evidence of a link between nitrates and some forms of cancer, but the evidence is scanty, Jackson said.

Agua Dulce has no sewer system, and an unintended consequence of the septic-tank moratorium is that it has effectively frozen development. “I feel really sorry for some of these people,” Petralia said. But, he said, the department is legally bound to prevent any new pollution of the water supply.

Public hearings on the moratorium are being planned by the county Board of Supervisors, said Joanne Darcy, the Santa Clarita Valley field representative for County Supervisor Mike Antonovich.

Action Considered Abrupt

But those whose plans have been put in limbo said in interviews late last week that the health department’s action was far too abrupt, and the hearings are, as property-owner Joe Perez put it, “too little, too late.”

The freeze is threatening some of them with the loss of their bank loans. Some have their life savings tied up in property upon which they may be forbidden to build. For others, it is merely a painful first encounter with a bureaucratic tangle.

“I’ve heard about this kind of thing happening, but I never thought it would happen to me,” said Reed Miner, a 55-year-old software engineer who was about to start building his “dream home”--until the health department stopped him.

When Miner last year bought a five-acre plot in Agua Dulce, near the tiny airfield, he had in mind the last house he would ever live in. He liked the serene setting, almost within view of his single-engine plane, which he keeps at the airfield. Miner said he invested the money he made on the sale of his home last year, plus 25 years’ savings. He has been renting a house in Newhall.

Miner said he still owes $60,000 on the land, but it may now be impossible to arrange a loan to pay for the land and construction of the house. “Frequently, out here, if you can buy half the land, you can get a construction loan that picks up the other half of the land cost plus the cost of construction,” he said. “Now, the whole deal may fall in, and if I can’t come up with the money, the land will revert to the owner.”

Miner visited his lot Friday, pointing out the graded area for the tennis court-to-be and the imagined house. Without the health department permit, the final building permit cannot be issued. Without the building permit, he cannot get a construction loan. Without the loan, he cannot pay off the rest of what he owes on the land.

‘It’s Inhuman’

“It’s inhuman,” he said of the delay.

Despite the moratorium, Joe Perez said he still plans to move his family to his five-acre plot in Agua Dulce. Perez, a grocer, and his wife and three children are now living in a Canyon Country rented apartment that must be vacated in two weeks, he said. He is having a house trailer delivered to the site, “permit or no permit,” he said.

His application for a septic-tank permit had been approved Sept. 20 of last year, he said. But in January, when he sought to have the permit renewed for 1987, as required, he was told of the nitrates in Agua Dulce ground water and that no permits could be issued.

Perez had already dug a well, graded the site and planted the property with trees. All of his savings are tied up in the project, he said. “The concrete guys and framers are all waiting,” he said. “Why can’t they let the people who have gone so far continue?”

Two years ago, Mary and Jack Wyle, realtors who have lived in Agua Dulce for many years, decided to build a restaurant and small shopping center in the “heart of town”--which consists of the single intersection of Darling and Agua Dulce Canyon roads.

They spent more than a year getting a zoning variance, lined up every permit, and several months ago drilled a well and started grading their lot, Mary Wyle said. Then the health department found the nitrates.

She said she cannot understand why nitrate contamination found in a few wells should stop all development in the area, even in parts of town where no nitrates have been found. And, she said, no one in the health department or county government has answered her questions.

Carol MacDonald said she is in a better position than most of the other property owners whose projects are held up. “Some of them have taken out big-buck loans and have their life savings tied up,” she said.

Planned Move From Ranch

Even so, years of planning have been stopped cold, she said. “Like all the people up there, we’re building our dream house,” she said. She and her husband were preparing to move to Agua Dulce from a 50-acre ranch in Walker Basin, near Tehachapi, so that they could be closer to their Sun Valley business.

“If I was moving from the city, it would be no problem,” she said. But moving a animals and farm equipment along with a large household takes months of planning, she said. “I’ve got tons of animals to move,” MacDonald said. “They’re not like furniture, which can go in storage.”

MacDonald said that the nitrate problem may mean that Agua Dulce will have to get a municipal-water system. She and many other residents said that is just what they don’t want. “They’ve been talking about bringing in water and lights. . . . If we wanted that, we’d move to Valencia. We want the rural life.”

The moratorium has affected a large project along with the small ones. For six months, Larwin Development has had every approval--except the health department’s--for a planned 49-home development on 120 acres of land, said Larwin president Michael Keston. The company has more than $2 million tied up in its project, he said.

Larwin has hired independent water and sanitation experts to “see if they can come up with data that can shed more light on the problem,” Keston said.

Long-Term Problem

“It can take anywhere from 30 to 60 years for nitrates to leach from the surface into the aquifer,” Keston said. “So one of the major issues is that what’s occurring there today is based on what might have happened 50 years ago,” he said.

He said that any septic tanks that contributed to the nitrate buildup are probably old, inefficient systems that do not adequately diffuse the contaminants, which would then be broken down naturally in the soil.

The modern septic systems planned for Larwin’s development would remove most of the nitrates from sewage before it reaches ground water, Keston said. Also, various species of plants will be planted that are efficient absorbers of nitrates, he said.

Present Owners Angry

The health department decision has also incurred the wrath of many who already own homes in Agua Dulce. Linda Kirk, who represents Agua Dulce’s “water committee,” an informally organized group of homeowners concerned with water issues, said that dozens of tests of private wells have showed no widespread nitrate problem.

Kirk said property values have already suffered because of what she considers a premature conclusion by health officials.

“They have a few problem wells, but it is not an areawide problem,” Kirk said. “I tested water running out of our creek at the south end of the valley, and it has less than 1 part per million of nitrates.” The state limit is 45 ppm.

The issue has been blown out of proportion, she said. “If nitrates scare you, then you should not eat hot dogs and bologna, because they’re loaded with them,” she said.

Jackson, of the state health department, said the risk to infants, who do not eat solid foods that contain nitrates, comes from polluted water.