Courtroom Battle Set in Historic Water Fight : Ecology: San Gabriel Valley officials want increased power to oversee the cleanup of serious underground pollution. Environmentalists see a conflict of interest in the attempt.

Environmentalists in the San Gabriel Valley call their fight against local water officials a historic battle over “hearts, minds and faucets.” For their part, the water officials say they simply want the power to do a job that has taken far too long: the complicated and expensive cleanup of one of the West’s worst water pollution problems.

The battle between these two forces goes to court Tuesday, when a Los Angeles Superior Court judge hears arguments on the Main San Gabriel Basin Watermaster’s request to oversee cleanup of underground pollution in the San Gabriel Valley.

It is a struggle, however, that extends beyond eastern Los Angeles County. Powerful players such as the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California and the Sierra Club have lined up on opposite sides.

If the judge grants the watermaster’s request, the nine-member board would get increased authority to control how and where water is pumped in the San Gabriel Basin--a crucial step in remedying the pollution.

Currently, no one governmental agency has the overall authority to finance and supervise the cleanup.

The watermaster wants to fill this void and work as a cleanup team with three key municipal water districts: the Upper San Gabriel, Three Valleys and San Gabriel. These districts formally linked forces last week to form the Main San Gabriel Basin Water Quality Authority, a public agency with the ability to seek financing for the cleanup.

All this troubles environmental groups such as the Sierra Club, which wants the state Legislature to create a new, regional super-agency to oversee the cleanup. They fear that if local water officials assume the lead role, it would represent a conflict of interest and could shut out public participation. The watermaster and water boards are partly made up by people whose business is making money selling water or those who are closely associated with those who do.

“The watermaster cannot protect both the private interests of water companies and the public’s interests,” said Maxine Leichter of the Sierra Club’s Angeles Chapter, a 58,000-member group.

Furthermore, environmentalists don’t consider the watermaster a public agency. Giving more power to it, environmentalists say, would not best serve the interests of 1 million water consumers from Alhambra to La Verne.

But local water officials who dismiss the conflict-of-interest charge say that creating a new public agency could take years.

“In the meantime, nothing gets accomplished,” said Robert G. Berlien, an official with the watermaster.

Now, the watermaster has limited control over pumping rights. Pumping affects the movement of large underground clusters, or plumes, of pollution. Pulling water up in one spot, for example, could draw pollution into a new area, tainting a once-clean well.

One in every four wells in the basin has been closed due to contamination spread through 200 square miles. The pollution, believed to come from degreasing agents and solvents used for decades by aerospace industry factories, machine shops and dry cleaners, was discovered in 1979.

In 1984, federal officials placed the entire San Gabriel Basin on the Superfund priority list. Remedying the problem is estimated to take decades and cost $850 million to $1 billion.

Unlike an oil spill or smoggy skies, this disaster is hidden from view. Observers agree this is why the problem has been so easy to ignore. Nonetheless, chemicals each day slowly make their way through the vast but fragile underground aquifer system that underlies nearly two dozen cities.

To environmentalists, the fight over the lead agency is historic in the arid semi-desert of the San Gabriel Valley. “Water is power in California,” Leichter said. “This . . . represents the first time there’s been a challenge to the water establishment in the San Gabriel Valley.”

The Los Angeles County district attorney’s office has filed a brief supporting the environmentalists, arguing that the watermaster is not accountable to the public and should not be given the authority it seeks. Besides the Sierra Club and the grass-roots activist East Valleys Organization, several other San Gabriel Valley groups have come out against the watermaster.

“The waters would be very much muddied if the watermaster were granted additional powers,” said Jan Chatten-Brown, Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner’s special assistant on environmental issues.

Although more guarded in their reaction, regional U.S. Environmental Protection Agency officials have voiced concerns about cleanup plans proposed by the local water agencies, whose approach runs counter to a $106-million, five-year plan announced by EPA and state officials in April.

The federal and state water officials favor construction of large-scale treatment plants that focus broadly on the dirtiest pockets of pollution. The local agencies want to emphasize a more individualized approach, utilizing the small-scale cleanup of certain polluted wells.

Despite the EPA concerns, the granddaddy of regional water agencies, the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, supports the watermaster. So does the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board.

The State Water Resources Control Board, which is assisting in the cleanup and on Thursday reviewed the issue at a Sacramento meeting, has remained neutral.

Environmentalists say they don’t trust leaving the cleanup solely to local water officials, many of whom also head private water companies or are closely connected to those who do.

“We believe the watermaster is a dinosaur, a relic,” said Carol Montano of the East Valleys Organization. “The watermaster runs from accountability.”

But watermaster board member Burton E. Jones discounted the notion of a conflict of interest, and that the watermaster, along with the new water-quality authority, is best suited to handle the cleanup.

Jones, who heads the Upper San Gabriel Valley Municipal Water District board and will serve on the new water quality commission, said: “We will be asking for public input and I’m sure we’ll get it.”

BACKGROUND

Nearly 150 public and private water companies, water districts and water rights holders provide water to consumers in the San Gabriel Basin, which encompasses most of the San Gabriel Valley except the Pasadena and Pomona areas. The Main San Gabriel Basin Watermaster is a nine-member board overseeing the rights to pump water from the vast but polluted basin. Members come from the publicly elected boards of the Upper San Gabriel Valley and the San Gabriel Valley municipal water districts and from water companies. The watermaster was created by a 1973 Los Angeles Superior Court decision that sought to clarify water rights in the San Gabriel Valley. Any changes in the watermaster’s authority must be approved by the court.