Activists Win Crusade for Clean Water

One is an emergency room nurse, the other a rural health inspector--a pair of first-time activists in this tiny mountain resort who joined forces to pressure state government.

For Emilie Kashtan and Kathy Kessler, the goal was nothing short of averting a public health disaster: persuading state regulators to get tough with a private water company whose rusting, outdated delivery system was making residents sick.

From their secluded western Sierra town, the duo spearheaded a campaign to pressure the Department of Health Services and the Public Utilities Commission to bring into line a water system they say has continually failed to meet minimum safe drinking-water standards.

They hand-delivered homespun letters to Gov. Gray Davis and the state attorney general’s office, asking them to investigate the Donner Lake Water Co. They cited brown water rife with bacteria, frequent outages and a state health department warning issued last summer that the firm’s 1,300 customers should boil their water before drinking it.

They became their own legal advocates, writing briefs and cross-examining water company owner Robert Fortino during a PUC evidentiary hearing in April.

Now the efforts have paid off: A Superior Court judge on Friday upheld a lawsuit filed against Fortino’s company by the local public water system. The suit asked the court to turn over the company to public officials by eminent domain due to the ongoing problems.

The order takes effect Monday.

“I’m not sure which one of us is Erin and which one is Brockovich,” said the 47-year-old Kashtan, referring to last year’s Julia Roberts film about a legal secretary who investigated a utility company accused of polluting a town’s water supply.

Added Kessler: “We got under people’s skins, got on their nerves. We did our homework and didn’t quit because lots of sick and elderly people needed a voice when it came to the quality of their water.”

Officials say the women’s victory could have resonance with hundreds of isolated California communities that rely on small purveyors for their drinking water.

Although officials have encouraged the consolidation of firms like Fortino’s Chico-based Del Oro Water Co.--which serviced eight communities in various parts of the state--they acknowledge more supervision may be needed to ensure that out-of-town water suppliers don’t allow service and equipment to deteriorate.

“There are problems with many small water companies who spread the net of their services too thinly,” said Peter Holzmeister, general manager of the neighboring Truckee-Donner Public Utility District, which filed the suit against Fortino’s company. State law allows for public entities to assume control of private companies by eminent domain if they can “demonstrate public good,” he said.

“I think state officials are realizing that when you manage from a distance, your responsiveness to problems can be inadequate.”

Added PUC Commissioner Henry Duque: “We try to watch these operations, but it’s like keeping an eye on a landlord who doesn’t even live in the state.”

Fortino declined to comment, but a spokeswoman said the company tried to make improvements since buying the operation in 1993.

“A lot of the problems stemmed from roadblocks erected by lawsuits and community protests [against the company],” said Heather Milne. “The permit process to make improvements takes time and I don’t think customers realized that.”

Local activists say that explanation doesn’t hold water.

Residents Say Water Caused Diarrhea

Donner Lake’s water delivery system features rusting 50-year-old steel pipes and World War II-era water tanks that together have leaked as much as hundreds of thousands of gallons a day, says Holzmeister. The operation, which draws its water from Donner Lake and two nearby springs, languished for eight years while Fortino promised to solve problems of low pressure, frequent outages and bacteria-laced water, the activists say.

Meanwhile, the Truckee-Donner Public Utility District, which provided service to the town’s other 7,000 water customers, was having no such water quality problems.

In 1999, Kessler, a 37-year-old water systems inspector with the Nevada County Department of Environmental Health, moved to a home on Donner Lake--a community dotted with small cabins and million-dollar vacation homes.

She soon noticed that she and many neighbors routinely suffered from stomach cramps, skin irritation and diarrhea.

She suspected bad water.

At one point, the Kesslers went 30 out of 45 days without water when the system was shut down due to low pressure, faulty pumps and water line breaks, the couple says.

To combat rising levels of bacteria, water company officials added what residents contend were high levels of chlorine, resulting in pungent chemical odors each time the water was turned on. Holzmeister says that while the chlorine levels were probably within public health limits, they affected taste and odor.

“You got used to taking real quick showers and you were even afraid to open your mouth--the taste was so bad,” said Donner Lake resident Frank Schneider. “You often came out smelling worse than when you went in.”

Kessler sometimes showered at the local high school, which operated on a different system. She also devised a “stealth watering” method: When downed service mysteriously returned in the middle of the night, she filled her bathtub and sinks so she could use the water to flush the toilets when service again disappeared hours later.

“Here was a lake right outside--water everywhere--and we’d joke that there wasn’t even a drop to drink,” she recalled. “The water company insisted the problem was that we were watering our lawns too much. Well, we don’t even have lawns at Donner Lake.”

Then Kessler’s public records search turned up disturbing news: Since 1991, the water system had been under order by the state Department of Health Services to build a water treatment plant.

While Fortino had repeatedly delayed the compliance order to build the treatment plant, he had been granted two rate increases by the PUC to study ways to improve the water system.

“Everything was always pending,” Kashtan recalls, “while they continued to collect our fees.”

When Kashtan, a Sacramento resident who spends much of her time at her family’s Donner Lake second home, met Kessler at a community meeting, the two decided to join forces. They formed the Donner Lake Citizens’ Group for Drinking Water and went to work documenting the water system’s problems while pressuring the state to take action.

“We thought it would take a couple of months to fix things,” Kashtan recalls. “We were wrong.”

The pair created a community e-mail network, trading thousands of messages to keep fellow residents informed. They took water samples to monitor high levels of chlorine and took photographs of leaky pipes and tanks to send to state officials.

With the help of a group of retired residents, they circulated petitions. Kashtan soon quit her job to concentrate on what had become a full-time task of pressuring state officials.

“We were just a couple of angry customers who tried to get state regulators to do their jobs,” Kessler said. “But they just circled the wagons, insisting there was nothing wrong with our water system.”

Then things changed.

Last summer, a Nevada County grand jury found that state regulators had “maintained a lenient position by excusing the company for missed deadlines and noncompliance.” Fortino’s company, the grand jury concluded, had “shown an attitude of indifference.”

At the same time, state health officials ordered residents to boil their tap water or purchase bottled water because of possible bacteria in the Donner system.

The PUC imposed mandatory water rationing and ordered Fortino to make immediate repairs. At the request of residents, the local public water company also began exploring purchasing the company.

‘They Were Outraged at What They Saw’

Carl Lischeske, chief of Northern California’s drinking water program for the state Department of Health Services, agrees regulators should have taken quicker action.

“At each juncture, we expected that corrections [by the water company] were imminent,” he said. “We certainly would have preferred to correct the water quality problem years ago, but hindsight is always 20-20.”

By then, residents had given up hope that Fortino could ever clean up the community’s water and began working with local officials to condemn the company. When the owner sought PUC approval for a $15-million loan, residents fought the move as unnecessary. Overseen by a local attorney, they filed numerous legal briefs with the PUC, responding to company lawyers, as Kashtan put it, “putting out fires.”

At an April hearing, they cross-examined Fortino and submitted in evidence such items as dirty filters to show the system was failing.

Said Glen Walker, an administrative law judge with PUC. “Those two women compiled a mass of information that would have put any lawyer to shame.”

Holzmeister, who says local water officials will soon work to upgrade the system and lift the boiling requirement, said the community owes Kashtan and Kessler for their doggedness.

“They were a burr in socks of the company and state officials,” he said, “but they were outraged at what they saw happening.”

Kessler hopes others unsatisfied with their water quality will take heart from their efforts: “I just hope no other community has to go through what we did.”