Contamination Opens Spigot on Water Concerns

Deep in the ground under Oxnard, something went terribly wrong last winter.

Lab technicians were conducting routine tests of water pumped from some city wells when they noticed alarming levels of contamination in the water.

The most disturbing finding was the presence of high levels of nitrates--a dangerous chemical that can be life-threatening to babies. The levels were so high that Oxnard would violate state and federal standards if it served the well water to its customers.

Faced with a potential public health crisis--nitrates have also been linked to increased miscarriage rates and are hazardous to ulcer sufferers--Oxnard shut down the wells and began serving its residents only water piped from Northern California.

The question of how the richest aquifer system in the county--and the lifeblood of the Oxnard Plain’s rich agricultural heritage--became contaminated is still being debated.

Nitrates, created from human and animal waste, typically come from sewage treatment plants, septic tanks or agricultural fertilizers. Just which of those is the culprit--or whether all three are contributors--remains a mystery.

The crisis in Oxnard is an illustration of what can go wrong with one of Southern California’s most precious and necessary resources: the water supply.

It’s a worst-case scenario and possibly an isolated incident. Still, it is enough to make some people think twice about turning on the tap to fill a glass with Ventura County water.

It’s also enough to cause concern at Ventura County’s ground water management agency.

Technicians at the Resource Management Agency will soon embark on a series of tests they hope will trace the contamination to its source.

They will also try to explain what county hydrologist David Panaro calls an overall trend of declining water quality.

The amount of minerals and salts in local water seems to be increasing, Panaro said.

At the same time, there are indications that byproducts of agricultural use may be seeping into the ground water.

He said he has noticed an increase in nitrate levels in the Santa Rosa Valley in recent years.

Countywide, the amount of minerals, salts and sulfur in ground water also seems to be on the rise. If he were to produce a chart showing water quality over the last 30 years in Ventura County, Panaro said, it would show steady degradation.

“I think it would be pretty easy to prove that,” he said.

Bottles Everywhere

Americans are fond of making jokes about drinking the water in other countries. In the United States, however, good drinking water is supposed to be a given. But a quick trip through local supermarkets shows that bottled waters, with labels showing snow-capped mountain and pristine streams, take up as much shelf space as fruit juices or milk. That suggests that Ventura County residents are turning away from the tap.

For most, the complaint is the taste. Water purveyors are upfront about the problem, largely a result of high mineral and salt content in the region. But water experts tend to dismiss the taste issue, pointing out that most contaminants slip by consumers without being detected.

“You can’t taste a virus,” said Don Kendall, general manager of the Calleguas Municipal Water District, which recently installed a sophisticated treatment system designed to remove bacteria from the water. “You can’t taste giardia.”

Understanding water quality is a grueling task. Just wading through the terminology is exhausting. Parts per million, chemicals, total dissolved solids, hardness, softness, surface water, ground water, aquifers. . . . The head reels.

But environmentalists say it can’t be ignored, calling drinking water quality a critical health crisis. And Congress recently recognized those concerns when it reauthorized the Safe Drinking Water Act of 1974, agreeing to create a $7.6-billion fund to improve water quality nationwide.

The Environmental Protection Agency is considering strengthening some of its standards for water quality, which in some cases were set as long ago as the 1940s.

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In Ventura County, two multimillion-dollar filtration plants have been built in the last two years to screen local reservoirs for bacterial contaminants. Another planned project--a $14-million treatment plant jointly sponsored by Port Hueneme, Point Mugu and several beach communities all well known for their foul-tasting drinking water--recently went out to bid.

Years ago, before development, before Ventura County became a virtual vegetable garden and fruit orchard for Southern California, the picture was quite different.

Consider local legend, which has explorer Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo arriving on Ventura County’s shores in 1542 with a craving for fresh water. Supposedly, Cabrillo asked the Chumash where to go to fill his ship’s water tanks.

The natives told him there was no need to put a party ashore; the water flowing out of the county’s rivers was so sweet the Spanish explorers could simply dip buckets off the side of their ship and pull up fresh water.

The county’s water supply is still plentiful, particularly compared with the rest of Southern California, but its purity is diminished.

“There is still plenty of quantity,” Panaro said. “But the quality isn’t there.”

Traditionally, local ground water, combined with lakes and streams, provided all that residents needed. But decades of use and a growing population have taken their toll. There are still layers of aquifers under the Oxnard Plain, but wells have to be sunk into the lower levels to pull out good water.

In recent decades, it has become common practice to use state water for domestic use or to blend the imported product with the local ground water. The water is piped from the Sacramento Delta to the Metropolitan Water District in Los Angeles, where it is treated and shipped to Calleguas Municipal Water District in Ventura County. It can cost more than water from local sources, but many believe it tastes better.

Experts say relying on state water is fine, as long as California doesn’t hit a major drought. But environmentalists say it’s a shame to have to use water from other sources when Ventura County was naturally endowed with a lot of water.

“We were blessed here,” said Neil Moyer, head of the Ventura County Environmental Coalition. “But we blew our blessing.”

Lowell Preston, manager of the county Resource Management Agency, disagrees.

“It’s not like we’ve destroyed the resources,” he said. “We probably haven’t treated them perfectly, but they have not yet been destroyed. All the water is still salvageable. But we can’t continue to contaminate and mistreat our water.”

Lax Regulations

Environmental attorney Glen Reiser attributes water quality problems such as the ones troubling Oxnard to lack of regulatory organization. There are 180 water purveyors in the county, ranging from the tiny--one well serving just a few households--to the huge--Calleguas Municipal Water District serves 500,000 customers. With that many agencies serving up the water, it’s hard to keep track of everything. “The biggest difficulty in Ventura County is that there is no integrated water management,” Reiser said.

What you get from your tap can vary from block to block. In the eastern part of the county, it’s pretty consistent because Simi Valley, Thousand Oaks, Moorpark and parts of Camarillo use mostly imported water, funneled through the state water project.

But in the western part of the county, “it’s kind of hit or miss, depending on where you live,” Reiser said.

“A lot of people when they move into a neighborhood look at the schools. But they don’t look at the water, and maybe they should.”

Keeping tabs on all the water purveyors are several agencies, including the county Resource Management Agency, the state Department of Health Services Division of Drinking Water and the Regional Water Quality Control Board of Los Angeles.

The county monitors wells, conducting frequent samplings. But as Preston points out, the county has no authority over the utilities. “I can’t tell them what to do,” he said.

The regional board mediates disputes and oversees quality issues. The state requires all the sellers to submit annual quality reports, which the districts in turn send to their customers. The state also issues citations and penalties for violations of bacterial standards.

From August 1995 to August 1996, 13 small purveyors in the county were cited for serving contaminated water. Sixteen others were cited for failing to provide required samples.

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County health officials pay close attention to water quality as well. When a recent outbreak of hepatitis A couldn’t be traced to a specific restaurant, Gary Feldman, a public health officer, looked to water as a possible source.

“We mapped all the cases to see if we could tie them to a specific water district,” Feldman said.

But the maps yielded no answers; the cases were scattered across the county. Feldman said he also mapped the 10 most recent cases of cryptosporidium to look for connections to water sources, also without solid conclusions. He said he is certain the county’s water supply is free from contaminants, except for cryptosporidium, which he concedes is not well monitored.

Cryptosporidium is a hot topic in water circles. A waterborne bacteria that causes intense intestinal disorders--a more dangerous version of giardiasis--it can kill the very young and those with suppressed immune systems.

Doctors are supposed to report all cases of cryptosporidium and giardiasis to the health department, Feldman said. But he said he thinks most doctors don’t bother to inform anyone when they treat those patients. And because a healthy person can suffer through both without taking a trip to the doctor, it’s hard to know how many cases there actually are in a given year.

Erik Olson, a senior attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council who coauthored a 1995 report on hazards in drinking water nationwide, said he is convinced there are many more cases of illness from waterborne contaminants than health departments know about.

“You are probably getting about one in 10 of the outbreaks that occur getting reported,” he said.

Alerted by Lab Tests

In Oxnard, it was lab tests, not health problems or bad taste, that alerted the city to the nitrate problem. The most serious side effect linked to nitrates is blue baby syndrome--potentially fatal oxygen deprivation in infants less than 6 months old.

When the contamination was discovered, the city went looking for answers. It hired an environmental consultant, Terry Foreman of CH2M Hill to prepare a report on possible sources of the nitrate contamination.

Foreman’s conclusions shocked many people by connecting the contamination to a project devised to save water supplies: the United Water Conservation District’s Freeman Diversion Dam.

The 5-year-old dam project diverts water from the Santa Clara River, then spreads it in ponds so that it can sink down into the aquifers under Oxnard, replenishing the supplies a century of human consumption has depleted.

The Freeman project has been successful in fighting seawater intrusion--where salt water advances into fresh--by putting water back in, or recharging, the aquifer.

The consultant’s report blamed the diversion project for Oxnard’s problem, saying low-quality river water is being used to recharge the aquifer. Although Foreman did not elaborate, many suspect that the sewage treatment plants along the river may be contaminating the water.

Just upstream from the Freeman Diversion Dam is a Santa Paula waste water treatment plant, which releases an average of 1.8 million gallons of sewage into the river every day. The sewage is treated, but only to minimal standards not fit for human use. And the plant hardly has a perfect record, having violated state rules on waste water discharges 23 times from 1993 to 1995.

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A little farther up the river, the Fillmore waste water treatment facility spreads 800,000 gallons of partially treated sewage into ponds every day. During heavy rains, the plant sometimes discharges into the Santa Clara River.

The suggestion that the nitrate contamination is caused by the Freeman dam makes United General Manager Fred Gientke practically sputter in outrage.

“Terry Foreman did a great disservice to all of us by distracting us from the problem,” Gientke said. “He’s thrown this baloney up in the air.”

United officials attribute Oxnard’s problem to leaking septic tanks in the El Rio neighborhood--which traditionally has been a problem--and the city’s decision to pump more water in recent years.

During an interview, Gientke pulled out one of many graphics his analysts have produced to explain United’s position. He described the Oxnard Plain as being filled with abandoned wells, many of which were not adequately sealed. They act as straws, he said, pulling surface contaminants--like agricultural fertilizers--into the ground. From there, the harmful elements resurface through active wells.

Preston from the county resources agency agreed that the wells--an estimated 800 of them, built between the 1800s and the 1950s--are part of the problem. He said the Environmental Protection Agency recently approved a $255,000 grant to seal as many of them as possible, with local agencies pitching in matching funds.

He attributes the nitrate contamination to agricultural use and to the El Rio septic tanks. Still, he is concerned that effluent from upstream sewage treatment plants could be carrying microorganisms like giardia into ground water through United’s recharging program.

“We need to know what it is that they are dumping in the river,” he said. “If that is not good, then we need to increase the treatment of what is going into the river.”

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Oxnard officials now say they aren’t sure of the source of the contamination.

“We really don’t know,” said Richard Eccles, Oxnard’s head of water quality. “We do know that 80% of the flows that come down the Santa Clara River are poor quality.”

But he also said there could be a connection to Oxnard’s signature crop. “Strawberries are a high-fertilizer group,” Eccles said. “A lot of nitrates are used in their production.”

Regardless of the source, the contamination is cause for serious concern and quick action, said Robert Ghirelli of the Regional Water Quality Control Board. Otherwise, the problem could spread.

“Over the long term you could end up losing more of the basin than is already affected,” he said. “We want to try and prevent that.”

Nitrate contamination is very expensive to clean up, as Orange County officials found out in the early 1990s when sewage plants and agricultural fertilizers contaminated the Santa Ana River. The cost of that ongoing cleanup is expected to be about $200 million.

There are no estimates yet on cleaning up Oxnard’s contamination. But environmentalists say they fear that the expense of the nitrate problem will end up being passed on to the residents.

“I am concerned about the poor people of Oxnard who can’t afford to buy bottled water,” said Carla Bard, an environmental consultant with Patagonia Inc.

And if what has happened in Oxnard isn’t an isolated incident, Ghirelli said the public needs to think seriously about ways to halt further declines in water quality.

“If the trend continues showing things are getting worse, I think it deserves some attention,” he said. “But how much money are people willing to spend?”

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Water Menu

Even though bad taste doesn’t necessarily mean bad water quality, consumers worry about it. What follows is a menu of sorts, explaining some of the reasons Ventura County tap water tastes the way it does.

SULFATES: They can create a rotten egg smell and even have a laxative effect on some people, although EPA says there is no health hazard involved. They can also make water look cloudy. Increased levels can be a result of some agricultural fertilizers. Who has high levels? The Channel Islands Beach Community Services District, Fillmore, Oxnard, Santa Paula, Port Hueneme and Ventura.

TOTAL DISSOLVED SOLIDS: This is the amount of mineral and salts in drinking water. David Panaro of the county’s Resource Management Agency says they can be harmful for people with kidney and blood pressure problems. “You don’t want to be drinking a lot of salts and minerals,” he said. Total dissolved solids also contribute to deterioration of household appliances and plumbing because they cause buildup. Who has high levels? Most of the west county. In the Channel Islands Beach Community, total dissolved solids are blamed for notoriously awful water. Fillmore, Camarillo, Oxnard, Santa Paula and Port Hueneme’s ground water also have high TDS levels.

NITRATES: They are extremely dangerous and linked with blue baby syndrome, miscarriages and can be damaging to ulcer patients. Oxnard is the only city in the county with ground-water contamination over the acceptable limits for nitrates, but occasionally high levels of nitrates can be found in ground water from the Camrosa Water District, which serves the Santa Rosa Valley, and Santa Paula.

IRON: Not bad for you, but it can stain laundry brown or yellowish and taste a little metallic. Before blending with state water, Camarillo’s water is high in iron, as is Ventura’s.

MANGANESE: Smells like rotten eggs. High levels caused Fillmore to shut down one of its wells. It has also been detected in Ventura.

CALCIUM: In the beach communities and Ventura, calcium collects on pots and pans, explaining that ugly white residue you may have noticed.

TRIHALOMETHANES: These are known carcinogens linked to bladder, colon and rectal cancers. They are created when chlorine used to disinfect drinking water comes in contact with organic matter. Water from Lake Casitas, which serves parts of Ventura and the Ojai Valley, is high on cancer-causing trihalomethanes, spiking above the standard that the EPA is supposed to adopt by 2000. But a new filtration plant, moving on line now, is supposed to correct that problem. Lower levels have also been detected in United Water Conservation District water, which serves Port Hueneme, Point Mugu and the Channel Islands Beach Community Services District.

TURBIDITY: This is cloudiness caused by suspended matter. It can cause problems by providing a place for bacteria to hide to avoid chlorine disinfection. Lake Casitas sometimes has turbidity problems.

ALGAE BLOOMS: Algae in Lake Casitas occasionally slip unnoticed into the water supply. Without treatment, they can create a musty, unpleasant taste in drinking water.