Tanner Strives to Shield Area From Water Cleanup Costs

Assemblywoman Sally Tanner (D-El Monte) said she will ask legislators and congressmen representing the San Gabriel Valley to fight any move that would force residents to help pay for cleaning up the area’s polluted ground water through higher water bills.

Tanner, who heads the Assembly Environmental Safety and Toxic Materials Committee, said officials of the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency told her last week that the EPA may ask water companies to pay for installation of treatment systems at polluted wells. If utilities have to pay that cost without EPA assistance, Tanner said, the result will be higher water bills for consumers.

EPA officials disclosed last month that it will cost hundreds of millions of dollars to deal with ground-water contamination in the San Gabriel Valley. They said the effort will require resources beyond the state and federal Superfund programs.

Tanner said it is “totally unacceptable” to shift even part of the financial burden for cleanup from the state and federal governments to residents.

‘Huge Problem’

She said federal officials have known all along that cleaning up a water basin that serves 1 million people would be expensive.

“Sure, it’s a huge problem,” Tanner said, but she maintained that the cost does not justify shifting a state and federal responsibility to water companies and their customers.

The EPA has conducted extensive ground-water studies in the San Gabriel Valley since 1984 to define the problem, but it has not proposed a comprehensive solution.

Tanner said federal officials assured her that financing options for the San Gabriel ground-water project were only “under discussion” at this point and that no decisions have been made.

But Tanner, who was instrumental in having the ground-water problem placed on the state and federal Superfund priority lists, said she is upset that the EPA is even considering a move to limit its financial commitment. Normally, the EPA pays 90% of the cleanup costs on Superfund projects and requires states to pay the remaining 10%.

Paula Bisson, section chief at the regional EPA office in San Francisco, and Niel Ziemba, manager of the San Gabriel Valley project, were the EPA officials who met with Tanner last week. Neither was available for comment on Tanner’s remarks.

Sharing Costs

In earlier interviews, however, Bisson and Ziemba said dealing with contaminated ground water in the San Gabriel Valley is so costly and complex that resources beyond state and federal Superfund programs will be necessary. They said state and local officials should begin thinking about how the costs might be shared.

To fully clean up the basin would require decades of work and $217 million to $800 million, according to EPA estimates. Just treating contaminated water as it is pulled up from wells for delivery to customers would cost $185 million or more, the agency has said.

Water from about 70 wells in the San Gabriel Valley cannot meet state and federal standards because of contamination by trichloroethylene (TCE), perchloroethylene (PCE) or similar compounds. Some of the wells have been closed; others produce water that must be treated or blended with purer water before it can be delivered to customers. The EPA has identified 90 other wells that could be affected by contaminants if ground water is not cleaned up in the next five to 20 years.

Tanner said she will ask all the congressmen who represent the San Gabriel Valley to urge the EPA to fully fund the San Gabriel Valley cleanup project. In addition, she said, she is seeking a meeting with Gov. George Deukmejian to obtain a renewed state commitment to the project.

Tanner said she also intends to seek additional state funds to track the sources of ground-water pollution.

“I’m convinced that there is still contamination coming into the water,” she said.

Both the EPA and the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board have programs under way to trace sources of ground-water pollution in the San Gabriel Valley, but both agencies have said they lack the resources to do a comprehensive job.

Tanner said: “It does not seem reasonable to me to spend $800 million to clean up a contamination problem when we are not doing nearly all that could be done to clean up areas where chemicals are continuing to leach into ground water and when we are not able to rigorously enforce the law so that more leaks don’t take place.”

Tanner said she will seek increased appropriations for the water board to investigate leaks from chemical storage tanks and other potential sources, but she did not specify an amount.