Santa Ana River Cleanup Strategy Nears Completion

After five years of debate and delays in resolving one of Southern California’s most severe water pollution problems, state officials are completing a cleanup strategy for the Santa Ana River that affects three counties and could cost half a billion dollars.

A recently released report that took three years and $1 million to compile outlines the solutions, all of which are controversial and expensive. Now, the mission of state water quality officials is to choose an approach that will halt the long legacy of contamination that already has ruined large quantities of drinking water supplies.

“I have one question,” one state water official said at the conclusion of a recent four-hour workshop on the issue. “Are you going to give bodyguards to all the board members after we finally make this decision?”

Anita Smith, a longtime member of the Santa Ana Regional Water Quality Control Board, was only half-joking about her fears in tackling the project.

Ridding the 100-mile river of dangerous nitrates has been the most contentious and intractable water-quality issue facing the three-county region of Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino.

The proposed new regulations are highly unpopular with many cities in Riverside and San Bernardino counties, which will have to bear the multimillion-dollar expense and pass it on to consumers in the form of higher sewer bills.

The Santa Ana Regional Water Quality Control board, composed of nine appointed citizens and politicians from the three counties, is expected to act on the proposals this fall. It will be the costliest water-cleanup operation in the region’s history--preliminary estimates range from $300 million to $500 million over 25 years.

At stake is the safety of one of the arid area’s most valuable treasures--the ground water that provides a large portion of the three counties’ drinking water.

“It’s expensive, and it’s complex, and no one wants to accept the blame. But the drought has brought people around to the realization that ground water is becoming more and more valuable,” said Doug Drury, operations manager for the Chino Basin Municipal Water District, which has two large waste-water plants that discharge nitrogen into the river.

Exposure to large quantities of nitrates can be especially dangerous for children. The chemical can cause fatal blue-baby disease, a condition in which blood cannot carry adequate oxygen.

The source of most of the nitrates is the treated sewage of 2 million people that flows daily into the river from 18 waste-water plants in the two upstream counties. Some nitrates, found in human and animal wastes, also come from manure at dairy farms and fertilizer that has seeped from lawns and farms for over a century.

The state’s limit for nitrogen in the Santa Ana River is 10 parts per million. But every year since 1986, it has exceeded that limit.

Already, six of the 19 river-fed ground-water basins in Riverside and San Bernardino counties, mostly in Chino, Riverside and Colton, are too contaminated to use. And at least five more will have to be shut down or will come perilously close to the limit by the year 2015 unless action is taken, according to a water board report.

The regional water board’s proposal would force all cities and sewer districts in San Bernardino and Riverside counties to remove about half the nitrates from their waste water before pumping it into the river, as well as require projects that cleanse about 30 billion gallons of ground water annually.

Board reports estimate that the $300 million to $500 million price tag over about 25 years would figure out to $150 or more per person in San Bernardino and Riverside counties. Some waste-water officials believe that the staff’s preliminary estimate is low and that real costs could run much higher, perhaps more than double.

In response, each city and district is trying to come up with persuasive evidence to show that the plan is unreasonable.

“Everybody recognizes it as a problem. The concern is, who is responsible?” said Drury. “The people in the upper basin, closer to the mountains, don’t have a problem with their wells. The problem is downstream. So it’s a case of ‘it’s not our problem, it’s your problem.’ ”

Most of Southern California’s sewage effluent is pumped into the ocean, not inland streams, so the plight of the Santa Ana River is unusual. It is believed to be the only such river in California.

“The Santa Ana River is overwhelmed with effluent, and such effluent-dominated streams are quite unique,” said Joanne Schneider, the water board’s environmental program manager.

The river, Southern California’s longest, flows from the San Bernardino Mountains to the ocean off Huntington Beach.

Between San Bernardino and Chino, sewage-treatment plants use the river essentially as an urban conduit for enormous amounts of waste water, about 150 million gallons a day.

As the river flows downstream, that waste seeps into Riverside County and San Bernardino County ground water, contaminating it with an increasing load of nitrates. Most, however, empties into Orange County.

In Anaheim, the Orange County Water District captures nearly all of the river’s flow and lets it sink into massive underground basins to replenish the ground water, which supplies about half of the county’s drinking water.

For that reason, the county has a strong motive to see the river cleaned up, and its water agency has been the most vocal lobby for stringent controls upstream.

Orange County residents would get all of the benefits of the cleanup, but wouldn’t have to pay a penny, since they are the victims of the pollution, not the cause.

Most of the cities are trying to persuade the board to adopt lesser standards that they could meet with minor additions, such as pumps and aerators, instead of expensive, massive new structures and piping. The board’s staff, however, says that might not sufficiently protect ground water in all of the river’s basins.

Cleaning up the existing polluted ground water, mostly around Riverside and Chino, is even more of a challenge than cleansing the waste water that flows into the river.

Pumping such large quantities could cost $5 billion. To meet the board’s water-quality objectives, numerous desalting plants would have to be built and 425 new wells drilled to draw 500 billion gallons of water a year.

“And you would have to stay in this mode forever,” said Wildermuth.

Faced with such intimidating calculations, the board’s staff is moving toward requiring cleanup of much less water, at about one-tenth the cost. Under the proposal, enough nitrates would be removed so that each city or agency has access to some ground water. Much of the underground supply would be left alone and would continue to degrade, Schneider said.

But that means the board would have to abandon its original ground-water limits, which were set in 1976 to provide long-term protection of the basins. Water-quality officials would be out on a legal limb, because they would be ignoring their own standards.

“It really rubs me wrong to recommend a plan that doesn’t comply with the law,” Schneider said, “but we have to realize the practical realities. The best we can do is come up with the least illegal one.”

Troubled River

Nitrates in the Santa Ana River, a main source of drinking water in Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties, pose one of Southern California’s most severe water pollution problems. From San Bernardino to Chino, 18 sewage-treatment plants (major ones shown on map) pump wastewater containing nitrates into the river. The dangerous chemical seeps into the soil, and has already rendered large amounts of ground water undrinkable in Riverside County. Most of the river’s flow, however, empties into Orange County at Prado Dam and is captured in Anaheim to replenish the county’s huge ground-water basin. Orange County officials worry that the nitrates are building up and starting to jeopardize their valuable water supply, too. After years of debate, state officials are completing an ambitious, costly cleanup plan for the river and its ground-water basins.

Source: Santa Ana Regional Water Quality Control Board