Water Quality
* “Plan Designed to Bring Delta Foes Together Inflames Debate Instead” (Sept. 16) misstates the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California’s position regarding the controversial peripheral canal while obscuring the agency’s real focus on drinking-water quality. Improved drinking-water quality has been a lost component of the Calfed process and Metropolitan has taken the position that it is a paramount priority.
Every 100 milligrams of added salt per liter in our water supplies from the Bay-Delta and other sources add $100 million in associated costs to Southern Californians. The costs of bad water quality include additional water treatment and accelerated corrosion of not only manufacturing facilities but residential hot water heaters and home plumbing systems. Most critical, however, are the public health risks from water four to six times higher in salts than the national average and the resulting high level of treatment byproducts that form when salty water is disinfected.
Southern California would benefit from any cost-effective water-quality solution in the Bay-Delta that Calfed can formulate that meets the minimum health standards we are advocating. That solution does not require that we dictate engineering strategies to Northern California. The peripheral canal is only one of the alternatives being examined. This agency will support any solution that proves effective, both in terms of human benefits and associated costs.
RONALD R. GASTELUM
General Manager, MWD
Los Angeles
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