Local News in Brief : Garden Grove : Polluted Well to Be Cleaned Up by District

The Orange County Water District has agreed to finance a $900,000 project to clean up a polluted Garden Grove well that eventually could produce enough water for use by 15,000 people a year, officials said.

The joint agreement calls for the city to repay the water district within 7 years for the cost of the cleanup, water district spokesman Gordon Elser said. Water now in the well, which is not in use, contains unsafe levels of nitrates. Removing the nitrates by installing purification equipment at the wellhead should produce about 3,000 acre-feet per year of usable ground water, Elser added.

The cost of pumping and purifying ground water, Elser said, is cheaper than purchasing imported supplies, about $180 an acre-foot compared to $231 an acre-foot for imported water.

The water district is responsible for managing the county’s vast ground water supply under the Santa Ana River in north Orange County. It acts as a wholesaler selling water to smaller districts in the county. About 60% of the water that the Orange County Water District sells to local districts comes from aquifers. The Garden Grove well is one of about 500 in the central and north county areas.