Give Us the Facts About Water

Erin Brockovich was probably the last person S. David Freeman, general manager of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, wanted to see at a City Council hearing on chromium 6 in local drinking water.

Freeman and other local water officials say that the amount of the chemical found in local wells tested so far is too small to be of concern. But trying to calm the public’s fears about the safety of their drinking water isn’t easy when you’ve got someone like Brockovich sounding the alarm.

The real-life legal investigator draws movie-star attention since Julia Roberts portrayed her in a Hollywood movie based on her work in a chromium 6 contamination case in Hinkley. And there she was telling council members Laura Chick and Joel Wachs, who’d called the hearing, that chromium 6 was a “poison” in the water.

Tests of San Fernando Valley wells pumped by the DWP have turned up chromium--not chromium 6--in ground water ranging from trace amounts to 30 parts per billion. Chromium is not dangerous, but at heightened levels it can indicate the presence of the toxic chromium 6, a byproduct of some manufacturing industries. Freeman told the council that tests of DWP-supplied water, which blends well water with imported supplies, found nothing above 10 ppb, which he likened to “one eye drop in two swimming pools.”

Cause for alarm? Not necessarily. But cause for concern, yes.

Two years ago, the state Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment set a goal of reducing allowable levels of chromium in drinking water from 50 ppb to 2.5 ppb. Why set a more stringent goal if there’s no cause for concern?

Keep in mind that the goal was set for chromium, not chromium 6. When pressed by The Times, a spokesman for the health hazard office put the equivalent goal for chromium 6 at no more than 0.2 ppb. Just last week, preliminary tap water tests at 100 Los Angeles County fire stations, health centers, courthouses and other county-owned buildings found chromium 6 levels as high as 7.5 ppb.

Chick and Wachs are calling for a task force of federal, state and local officials to release information on chromium 6, including a report that about 200 industrial sites in Glendale, Burbank and Los Angeles could have contaminated soil. Does this mean the chemical is continuing to leach into the water table? What is being done to clean up the sites? Who is responsible? Or as Brockovich asked at the City Council hearing: “What’s the level today? What was it yesterday? How did it get there?”

We’re all for calm. It’s just that we’re all for information, too. Give it calmly. But give it to us.