Regional Task Force Considered to Spur Action on Water Pollution

Complaining that federal environmental officials have moved too slowly, nearly two dozen political leaders and water officials agreed Saturday to form a task force to hasten action against water pollution in the San Gabriel Valley.

Rep. Esteban E. Torres (D-La Puente) said the group might suggest the creation of a regional agency specifically to oversee the cleanup efforts and receive federal and state money. “This really is a very historic and important meeting,” Torres said at the session in South El Monte.

The politicians and water officials reiterated what has been said in the past about one of the nation’s more complex ground water problems. “I’ve been working on this for 10 years but not much has happened,” said Assemblywoman Sally Tanner (D-Baldwin Park), placing the blame on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

In 1979, high levels of water pollution, partly due to solvents used by industry, were first discovered underground. Since then, the EPA has determined that one-fourth of the 400 wells in the area are contaminated. The agency put the San Gabriel Valley on its Superfund list and has studied the problem extensively. But cleanup efforts, estimated to cost $800 million and to take decades, have yet to begin.

“We’d like to hand the ball to somebody,” David Jones, a regional EPA official, told the group. Jones said his office is struggling to cope with 60 Superfund sites.

Torres said the problem is complicated not only by the geology of the basin but also because the pollution cuts across so many jurisdictions. Nearly 50 separate water agencies serve one million people in more than two dozen cities.

Representatives of the Main San Gabriel Valley Basin Watermaster, the authority that oversees water rights in the region, welcomed the idea.

“We know the problem. We think we can solve it. We just need the financing,” said Burton E. Jones, president of the Upper San Gabriel Valley Municipal Water District. “EPA says it may study the problem another five years. We need a pollution treatment facility right now in Baldwin Park.”