TRABUCO CANYON : Illegal Dumping Poses Water Threat

Illegal garbage dumping in the Trabuco Creek area has created a threat to drinking water for thousands of South County residents, water experts said Wednesday.

“We went out there and looked at it, and we felt that there might be potential for contamination,” said Fred Sims, general manager of the Trabuco Canyon Water District, which serves about 7,500 people.

The district is in one of the county’s fastest-growing areas and is rapidly expanding its service.

Officials of the state’s Regional Water Quality Control Board visited the site of the garbage dumping last week and determined that the dump did not pose an immediate hazard, Sims said. Still, he and other district officials remain concerned about the potential hazard, because the site is upstream from two district wells.

The site is on private property and several hundred yards off Trabuco Creek Road, a dirt and gravel road that runs east from Trabuco Canyon Road near Rancho Santa Margarita. Property owners in the area say they have been unable to control the dumping, and as a result the garbage has grown into a huge, scattered pile.

Sims said the heaviest concentration of debris is 300 to 400 yards long and a “couple hundred yards wide.” More garbage is scattered closer to the roadway, and the debris includes refrigerators, abandoned cars and household trash.

The several owners of the site said county officials have indicated that the owners might be held responsible for cleaning up the trash.

But what particularly worries district officials and residents is that the dump may contain paints, solvents or other toxic chemicals that could poison the water supply if sudden rains wash them into nearby Trabuco Creek. Because the site is on private land, it is rarely patrolled, so officials can only guess what may lie in the heap.

Residents say there has been a noticeable increase in dumping during recent weeks, which they attribute to a combination of stricter controls at local landfills and rapid growth in the Rancho Santa Margarita development. Some of the debris, according to residents, is construction material.

If people are illegally dumping trash that is refused by the local landfills because it is too hazardous, residents say, the water supply could be at risk.

“I think there’s an appreciable danger,” said Sam Porter, a property owner in the area and a member of the water district board. “We’re exposing an extremely valuable watershed to potentially dangerous chemicals.”

Porter has moved that the board close Trabuco Creek Road to traffic as a way of halting further dumping, and that suggestion will come before the board’s engineering committee next week. Sims said he is not sure the board can legally close the road, but added that the matter will be reviewed by the district’s legal staff.

After being considered by the engineering committee, the motion would probably proceed to the full board for a vote on Jan. 17, Sims added.