No Agreement Made on Lead Agency in San Gabriel Valley Water Cleanup

A group of elected officials, environmentalists and water experts Saturday failed to resolve their longstanding disagreement over whether a new regional super-agency should be created to clean up widespread ground water pollution in the San Gabriel Valley.

But during a three-hour meeting in Baldwin Park, they did reiterate their desire to form a task force on remedying the ground water pollution.

While local water officials said they believe they can oversee the cleanup--estimated to cost more than $800 million--environmentalists and some elected officials said a new agency must be created through state legislation. They argued that such an entity would be more accountable and have more authority than existing local water agencies.

The meeting was hosted by two local legislators in hopes of bringing together all sides in the controversial issue.

“There was broad consensus that an agency has to be created,” Rep. Esteban Torres (D-La Puente) said at the conclusion of the meeting that he hosted with Assemblywoman Sally Tanner (D-Baldwin Park).

While supporting creation of a task force, Al Wittig, a director of the Upper San Gabriel Valley Municipal Water District, nonetheless said: “We can do the job. Just give us a chance. The super-agency idea is a fallacy.”

Despite her differences with Wittig, the Sierra Club’s Maxine Leichter said the creation of a task force “will lead to a consensus.”

The task force, Torres said, will meet and develop its goals within 30 days. The group, he said, will have about a dozen members, including environmentalists, representatives from businesses and industry, elected officials and water experts.

The idea of the task force first arose during a meeting Torres and Tanner held in December when local politicians complained that federal environmental officials were moving too slowly in dealing with the pollution problem.

Last month, federal and state officials released a short-term, $106-million cleanup plan. In doing so, they acknowledged that no single government agency exists to oversee or fund the project, which likely will take decades.

The officials urged, however, that local water agencies, under the jurisdiction of the Main San Gabriel Basin Watermaster, should be given a chance to develop their own plan by November. The watermaster oversees pumping throughout the basin, which is served by more than 45 water companies and stretches across most of the San Gabriel Valley, except areas around Pasadena and Pomona.

The contamination stems partly from carcinogenic solvents that businesses and industries released into the underground aquifer that serves 1 million water users. Even with the pollution problem, the San Gabriel Basin still provides 90% of the area’s water, relying on unpolluted wells.

However, 25% of the 400 wells have been shut down due to the pollution, which was discovered in 1979. It is considered one of the most serious and complicated problems of its kind in the West.

In 1984, the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency put nearly 200 square miles of the San Gabriel Valley on the Superfund list of the nation’s most polluted sites.