County to Test Water for Chromium 6

Deciding not to wait for the state to demand action, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors moved Tuesday to immediately begin testing for the presence of the suspected carcinogen chromium 6 in drinking water.

The motion by Supervisor Mike Antonovich, approved on a 4-0 vote, calls for county officials to conduct a pilot study that will test drinking water at county facilities and report back to the board in 30 days.

The action came after state officials said it will take months to order local water utilities to begin testing.

Chromium 6 has been detected in two dozen San Fernando Valley wells used to supplement drinking water supplies for the cities of Los Angeles, Burbank and San Fernando.

Also Tuesday, Los Angeles City Council members Joel Wachs and Laura Chick introduced a motion calling on the Department of Water and Power and the upper Los Angeles River water master to release reports compiled over 18 months by a task force of federal, state and local water officials on chromium-related issues.

Mel Blevins, the court-appointed water master overseeing ground-water pumping rights in the Valley, said he welcomed the opportunity to report to the council on chromium 6 when it takes up the issue Sept. 15. But Blevins insists that the presence of chromium 6--the chemical involved in the film “Erin Brockovich”--in local supplies is too small to pose a threat.

“People like to compare this to the Erin Brockovich movie,” Blevins said. “These concentrations of hexavalent chromium are nowhere near what was involved in that activity. It’s a mistake to make those kind of comparisons.”

Ed Masry, who represented the plaintiffs in the Hinkley, Calif., case made famous by the movie, said chromium 6 there was reaching levels as high as 24 parts per million.

Wachs and Chick also called on the DWP to suspend its planned toilet-to-tap program that proposes using recycled sewage water to supplement the city’s ground-water supplies until new chromium 6 standards are adopted, in addition to better chemical monitoring procedures.

“There’s a cost to cleaning up the water,” Wachs said. “But what could be more than the cost of cancer, the cost of dying and the cost of lawsuits? It shouldn’t take another Erin Brockovich to force the city to protect the public’s health.”

In the 1996 case, residents of the San Bernardino County town of Hinkley won a $333-million settlement from Pacific Gas & Electric because the firm’s underground tanks leaked chromium 6 into ground water.

“The bottom line is that it’s important for the water master and DWP to report to the council on what’s going on with regard to the chromium issue,” Blevins said. “It’s my opinion, however, that the level of chromium 6 is not excessive.”

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The Times reported last month that a 1998 proposal to cut allowable amounts of chromium in water--as a means to reduce levels of its hybrid, chromium 6--was still being studied by state officials, who said it may take another five years to implement a tougher standard.

In response, both state and city officials have called for accelerating studies on the threat from chromium 6.

Wells pumped by the DWP have been found to contain levels of chromium ranging from trace amounts to 30 parts per billion, well under the current standard of 50 parts per billion.

Water pumped from Valley wells by the DWP is blended with other supplies and sent to customers across the city, according to DWP officials. When blended with imported water, chromium 6 levels were no higher than 5 parts per billion, said Pankaj Parekh, the DWP’s manager of regulatory compliance.

But Wachs and others say chromium 6 is a carcinogen in humans and numerous animal species--and is not supposed to be present in water at all.

“The resistance is mainly out of economic consideration,” Wachs said. “But this is the public’s water and the public’s health.”

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The stricter standard under consideration could raise water costs by forcing local agencies to buy more imported water.

David Spath, drinking water chief for the state Department of Health Services, said the economic impact of a tougher standard must be evaluated under the state’s 1996 Safe Drinking Water Act, the law responsible for triggering the state’s review of chromium 6 in water.

Senate Bill 2127, now on the governor’s desk, calls for the Department of Health Services to determine chromium 6 levels in drinking water supplied by San Fernando Valley aquifers, assess the risk to the public and report its findings to the Legislature by Jan. 1, 2002.

Wachs and Chick on Tuesday urged Gov. Gray Davis to sign the bill.