The Signal

8/26/2004

A New Water Pollution threat that could have been avoided.

By Paula Olivares 

A new threat to our water quality became known to the SCV public last week when District 36 announced it had exceeded the mandated levels for Trihalamethanes in its water supply.  District 36, a County Water Works controlled by the Board of Supervisors, serves Val Verde and parts of Castaic.  SunCal, Inc. has also just proposed that it serve the Northlake project and the new high school in Castaic, since Newhall County Water District has expressed concern over adequate water supply for another 3000 housing units.

Trihalemethanes have been with us for quite some time. They are a by-product of treating water that comes from Northern California through the aqueduct.  This water must be disinfected to make sure that it is free of bacteria, but due to other constituents found in state water project water, the treatment process used by Castaic Lake Water Agency creates Trihalemethanes as a by-product. In 1994, the US Environmental Protection Agency proposed reducing the maximum contaminant level from 100 ug/l to 80ug/l.  The US EPA adopted this level for the nation in 1998.  Our California State Dept. of Health Services announced at this time that it, too, intended to adopted this 80 ug/l maximum contaminant level (mcl) allowed for this pollutant, and did so in January 2002.  This new level would increase the margin of safety, especially for sensitive receptors such as children and pregnant women.  So, Castaic Lake Water Agency has known the level for this contaminant would be lowered for the last TEN years.

District 36 gets all its water from Castaic Lake Water Agency because there are few good sites for water supply wells in the area.  Because of this, there was a slow down on new hook-ups for many years.  Then District 36 decided to supply new building solely with state water.  In fact all new building in the Santa Clarita Valley will have to be supplied mostly with state water as over-pumping diminishes the ground water.  Many of us have expressed concern about this situation due to the unreliability of State Water project water that comes all the way from Northern California.  Now it seems there are water quality problems too.

So today, ten years after Castaic Lake Water Agency first knew the level could be lowered and six years after it was in fact lowered, the public finds out that CLWA has not rectified the problem.  District 36 was required by law last week to publish a health notice in the newspaper because the water it gets from CLWA exceeded the maximum contaminant level.  This notice triggered a flurry of news articles and public concern. My question is why did Castaic Lake Water Agency allow this to happen?

CLWA, as the state water wholesaler, gets as large a portion of our property tax as the City of Santa Clarita.  They get an additional large “special tax” on our tax bill for the filtration plant.  They have spent millions of dollars buying water for new development.  They spent 63 million dollars buying Santa Clarita Water Company knowing that their two Saugus wells were shut down due to ammonium perchlorate (rocket fuel) pollution.  Because CLWA bought this privately owned water company, the taxpayers are now picking up millions of dollars to investigate and clean the pollution plume.  The private owners are off the hook and laughing all the way to the bank.  Castaic Lake Water Agency has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on consultants and attorneys so that they will be allowed to continue to report these closed, polluted wells as an available water supply for new development.  They have spent all this money during the period that they knew they would have to reduce trihalamethanes in the water they deliver.  Obviously public health is not their primary concern.

Now CLWA says it will have the new filtration method on line by June 2005.  Areas that are served only by state water from CLWA are left scrambling for ways to ensure the public’s health.  My question to CLWA and its Board members is – Where are your priorities? Why wasn’t this problem addressed years ago?  Why did you choose to spend millions of dollars to supply new development and ignore the health of current residents?