Brockovich Warns Panel of ‘Poison’

Erin Brockovich, the woman who made chromium 6 a household word after being the subject of a popular Hollywood film, appeared before the Los Angeles City Council on Friday, chastising state and local officials for what she characterized as a dismissive attitude toward the chemical threat in local drinking water.

“People are being exposed to a poison in their water,” said Brockovich, a legal investigator whose role in a chromium 6 contamination case in Hinkley, Calif., was portrayed in the movie “Erin Brockovich.”

“Don’t dismiss it. . . . [you have to ask] What’s the level today? What was it yesterday? How did it get there?”

Brockovich and her boss, attorney Edward Masry, appeared before an abbreviated council hearing that drew about 50 people. Also testifying were DWP General Manager S. David Freeman and David Spath, drinking water chief for the state Department of Health Services.

The council session was called by Council members Laura Chick and Joel Wachs in response to a Times story on state delays in implementing tougher standard for chromium 6, a suspected carcinogen.

Both Chick and Wachs have also criticized the city Department of Water and Power, saying DWP officials have not taken the threat seriously enough.

The council passed a motion calling on Gov. Gray Davis to sign SB 2127, a bill requiring an accelerated review of chromium-tainted drinking water.

The legislation was sparked by last month’s Times story, which reported that a 1998 proposal to cut allowable amounts of chromium in water--in order to cut the levels of chromium’s toxic byproduct, chromium 6--was still being studied by state officials, who said it would take another five years to implement a tougher standard.

Because of time constraints, the council delayed action until Tuesday on two related motions. One of them would direct the DWP and the court-appointed official overseeing ground-water pumping rights to release reports compiled by a task force of federal, state and local water officials on chromium 6-related issues.

It also put off action on a motion calling for the DWP to suspend a planned toilet-to-tap program that would use recycled sewage water to supplement the city’s ground water supplies until new chromium 6 standards are adopted and better chemical monitoring procedures found.

Freeman downplayed the threat to local water supplies but warned that closing the ground water wells would eliminate about 15% of the DWP’s water supply.

“Under current approved testing technology, we have not detected any chromium in our customer’s drinking water above 10 [parts per billion],” Freeman said. “It’s like about one eye drop in two swimming pools filled with water.”

Freeman also complained that state officials proposed the tougher standard as a “public health goal.” He said that was an obscure term but should be considered a level to strive for and not a legal limit.

“Right now, we are told privately that our water is OK, while the public is given good reason to think otherwise,” Freeman said. “What is a responsible agency to do?”

Spath, however, said the risks from chromium 6 in drinking water are still being debated and studied along with the costs and benefits of stricter standards.

Spath has 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.

In the meantime, he added, the DHS would be sending out letters to water agencies encouraging them to test in advance of any action by the governor.

Wachs complained that the DWP had not apprised the council of new information about chromium 6 that had been presented at task force meetings.

Among that information was a March report from the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board that 205 industrial sites in Glendale, Burbank and Los Angeles could have soil contaminated by chromium 6.

In addition, state tests conducted in September 1999 showed that chromium 6 levels had risen from year-earlier levels in at least two wells in the Glendale-Burbank area.

Even so, water agency officials have said that while there is evidence chromium 6 can cause cancer when inhaled, there isn’t enough data to prove chromium 6 is a health threat when consumed in water. And so there was no need to alert city officials as more chromium information was gathered over the past two years.

Moreover, they say water coming out of the tap is blended with imported supplies. Should local wells be closed down, it would drive up water prices for everyone.

But Brockovich noted Friday that 50 of her original clients in the 1996 case against Pacific Gas & Electric had died because of chromium 6. The Hinkley residents won a $333-million settlement from Pacific Gas & Electric because the utility’s underground tanks leaked chromium 6 into ground water, though at concentrations far higher than those found in Valley drinking water wells.

In a related development Friday, state Sen. Tom Hayden (D-Los Angeles) wrote Wachs urging him to call on the establishment of an independent city regulator to monitor and enforce drinking water standards.

“This is not to shift the blame from the state to the city,” Hayden wrote in the Sept. 18 letter. “But to suggest that the City take new steps to protect its most vital resources from degradation caused by polluters aided by lack of aggressive monitoring and enforcement on the state level.”