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Industrial Pollution Is Threatening Our Drinking Water: A Dispatch From LosAs we bravely face our borders to ward off Terrorists, the enemy is
Angeles County
By Daniel Ross
Truthout, Thursday, July 23, 2015
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/32031-industrial-pollution-is-threatening-our-drinking-water-a-dispatch-from-los-angeles-county?tmpl=component&print=1
Parched brown postage-stamp lawns, freeway signs extolling water
conservation and scorched, tinder-dry hillsides are just some of the more
visible reminders of the current drought's choking grip for the 10.2 million
people who live in Los Angeles County.
Though water use has been cut by 29 percent in the state over the last two
years, with summer temperatures already hovering around triple digits, a
question being asked with greater frequency and not a little more urgency is
this one: If, as some experts ominously predict, the drought continues well
into the foreseeable future, where's the county's drinking water going to
come from?
Currently, LA County relies on water from three main sources: northern
California, the Colorado River and groundwater beneath the county's feet.
And while groundwater is the most accessible of the three, it's far from the
cleanest. Indeed, no other county in the state is more reliant than LA
County on groundwater that has been deemed contaminated at one time or
another.
That's not to say that the problem has gone unheeded. Since the 1980s,
billions of dollars have been pumped into cleaning the county's four main
water basins: the San Fernando, San Gabriel, Central and West Coast Water
Basins. But all these years later, a losing battle is still being waged in
some areas against the continued migration of contamination into clean
aquifers, a toxic legacy from decades of heavy industrial pollution in the
region. And the situation is reaching a watershed.
Experts predict that, unless further drastic measures are taken within five
to eight years to tackle groundwater pollution in the San Fernando Basin
alone, contaminated plumes will become so dense and permanent that the rest
of the wells in that area will need to be shut down.
The Cost of Groundwater Cleanup
For the past two-and-a-half-years, leading figures from a number of state
and regional environmental agencies have convened three times a year to
discuss what to do about the issue - a rare instance of so many influential
experts, governmental agencies and environmental organizations collaborating
toward a shared goal, but one that highlights the enormity of the problem.
Brought together by leading California environmentalists Jane Williams,
Cynthia Babich and Robina Suwol, the assembled experts at each convening,
have wrestled with this question: How can LA County's groundwater be cleaned
more quickly and effectively?
IF, AS SOME EXPERTS expect, THE DROUGHT CONTINUES WELL INTO THE FORESEEABLE
FUTURE, WHERE'S THE COUNTY'S DRINKING WATER GOING TO COME FROM?
At the nexus of the issue is the ever-ubiquitous matter of money - experts
pin the cost of removing denser contaminants alone from the nation's
groundwater at upwards of $110 billion. But there are other hurdles to
negotiate. One is that there is no one method available to successfully
remediate the sorts of toxic chemicals found in LA County's groundwater. Nor
has the sheer extent and exact nature of the contamination been
comprehensively mapped - a glaring omission as agencies draw up their
remediation plans. Then there's the simple matter of time. Some cleanups
take decades to accomplish.
With the task of these meetings to find a new way to approach the problem,
the success of the mission could hinge around a pilot project slated for the
small city of Maywood, in southeast LA - a project that seeks to bring the
collaborative nature of the thrice-yearly "convenings" out into the field.
"We need to understand what the dynamics are and how to get beyond those
things: the bureaucracy, the technology and the cooperation that needs to be
created," said Ken Manning, executive director of San Gabriel Basin Water
Quality Authority.
"A number of different agencies all play a part in any cleanup," he added.
"And so, you've got to figure out how these different agencies fit into the
formula, what role they're going to play, and then we need to educate them
about how they're going to interact with one another."
Past Efforts to Address Industrial Pollution
The history of heavy industrial pollution in LA County can be traced back to
World War II and onward into the '70s - a period when companies enjoyed much
looser regulatory shackles than today when it comes to the disposal of
industrial chemicals. Aerospace and defense manufacturers, metal plating
companies and dry cleaners provide a cross-section of the sorts of
industries responsible for this history of contamination.
These are the businesses from which heavy-duty solvents such as
trichloroethylene (TCE) and perchoroethylene (PCE), perchlorate and NDMA
(both constituents of rocket fuel) and hexavalent chromium (a byproduct of
welding) made their way into the groundwater. Most of these chemicals are
known carcinogens, while all are listed by the EPA as causes of acute human
health effects.
The year 1979 marked a pivotal juncture in the story of groundwater
contamination in LA County - that was the year multiple areas of
contamination were first discovered in the San Gabriel Water Basin. And
remediation efforts have been ongoing there ever since.
APPROXIMATELY 30 SQUARE MILES OF THE 170-SQUARE-MILE SAN GABRIEL VALLEY
WATER BASIN - FROM WHICH 1 MILLION PEOPLE CURRENTLY ACQUIRE 90 PERCENT OF
THEIR DRINKING WATER - IS STILL POLLUTED.
There are currently six different Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
Superfund Sites in the San Gabriel Valley, comprising 32 separate
groundwater treatment systems. As of the beginning of last year, these 32
projects had treated more than 100 billion gallons of contaminated water and
removed over 70,000 pounds of contaminants from the groundwater, while
50,000 pounds of soil contaminants was removed from industrial facilities.
The cost of these cleanups has run into hundreds of millions of dollars -
over $650 million so far. Responsible parties have contributed to nearly
three-quarters of the overall costs, while $600-$700 million is still
required for ongoing remediation efforts, making this combined groundwater
cleanup project one of the largest and most expensive ever in the United
States. That's because the extent of the remaining contamination is
staggering.
Approximately 30 square miles of the 170-square-mile San Gabriel Valley
Water Basin - from which 1 million people currently acquire 90 percent of
their drinking water - is still polluted. The Baldwin Park Operable Unit
alone addresses a "commingled" plume of groundwater contamination - replete
with such chemicals as TCE, PCE, perchlorate and NDMA - over a mile in width
and 8 miles in length.
Manning expects the cleanup in the San Gabriel Valley to continue for
another 20 to 25 years before the project can be deemed "finished." Though
"finished" doesn't necessarily mean that the aquifers will be completely
purged of contaminants.
"Unfortunately, it's a moving target because of state and federal laws in
terms of maximum contaminant limits. And we still don't know exactly how
much of the contamination is in the unsaturated zone that will still make
its way into the groundwater," he said.
Despite the enormity of the task that lies ahead, the cleanup in the San
Gabriel Valley is at a far more advanced stage than that in the San Fernando
Water Basin, said Manning -"They're where we were 25 years ago." That's why
cleanup efforts there have reached a critical juncture.
The San Fernando Water Basin
The discovery of contaminants in the San Gabriel Water Basin in the late
'70s triggered a broader investigation of groundwater contamination
throughout LA County, prompting the San Fernando Valley Superfund Site to be
placed on the National Priorities List in 1986.
The San Fernando Water Basin provides nearly 80 percent of all local
groundwater pumped by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, an
agency with groundwater rights to five separate water basins. Today, there
are essentially three distinct EPA-implemented cleanup systems toward the
east of the San Fernando Valley: at Burbank, Glendale and North Hollywood.
And in the last two years alone, the Los Angeles Department of Water and
Power (LADWP) has installed another 25 groundwater monitoring wells as part
of an effort to study the contamination that has resulted in the recent
trend of water well closures.
Of the 115 supply wells in operation in 1990, roughly half are now impaired
due to elevated contamination levels. Of the remaining half, about 30 are
deemed "reliable." As recently as 2002, there were 49 "reliable" wells in
operation.
"Then we have about 20 or so that can operate from time to time, but we have
to do that in a tentative fashion because when we pump, the contaminant
level in the water might elevate, at which point we have to back off the
pumping for a bit," said Gary Reed, of LADWP Water Resources.
There have been successes. The 12-strong Tujunga well fields to the north of
the North Hollywood Operable Unit were producing less than 7,000 acre-feet
of water a year before granular activated carbon treatment systems were
installed in two of the wells. Now, the entire well field produces more than
38,000 acre-feet of water. But efforts to contain the spread of all
contaminants have been limited.
Migration of a plume of hexavalent chromium, for example, near the North
Hollywood Operable Unit, has prompted the suspension of two wells since
2007. The largest TCE plume is almost 9 miles in length.
With that in mind, Reed doesn't underplay the problem.
"When you have something so expansive as what you see here, how can you
regain full use of something that has this kind of problem at this scale?"
said Reed, pointing to a map showing TCE contamination across the San
Fernando Water Basin.
"Small site-specific remediation is not going to deal with all of this
contamination we see on this map."
In many respects, the Central Water Basin tells a different, slightly more
fortunate, story. That's because the Central Basin, unlike the San Gabriel
and San Fernando Water Basins, contains a layer of clay - an aquitard - that
works like an "umbrella" to better protect lower aquifers from contamination
closer to the subsurface.
Because water from the Central Basin is largely drawn from aquifers below
the protective aquitard, the Central Basin is able to supply up to 40
percent of the overall groundwater demand in the area. This is compared to
the city of LA, where groundwater ordinarily comprises roughly 11 percent of
total water usage during normal years and up to 30 percent during drought
years.
The maximum amount of water that can be pumped from the Central Basin each
year is 217,367 acre-feet - a figure that can be changed only by court
order. Current pumping levels sit at roughly 17,000 acre-feet below that
cap.
ONE OF THE REASONS WHY CLEANUPS ARE TAKING SO LONG IS BECAUSE REMEDIATION
TECHNOLOGIES AREN'T ALWAYS UP TO THE TASK.
But there are considerable incentives for cleaning the Central Water Basin,
not least of all the increased potential of available water. Ted Johnson,
chief hydrogeologist at the Water Replenishment District (WRD) predicts that
if contaminants were removed from the subsurface aquifers, there could be
"tens of thousands if not more acres per feet" of drinking water available
for use each year.
Another incentive for cleanup is financial. Imported water in the Central
Water Basin is approximately four times more expensive than groundwater. But
where the Central Basin most closely resembles the San Fernando and San
Gabriel Basins surrounds the sheer extent of contamination that still
remains in the groundwater aquifers.
"The Whittier plume [which contains multiple contaminants, including TCE,
PCE and perchlorate] is over four miles long, and that's going to take
decades to clean up," Johnson said, highlighting just one of multiple and
extensive contamination plumes in the Central Basin.
And one of the reasons why cleanups are taking so long is because
remediation technologies aren't always up to the task.
Remediation Technologies
"In general, there is no silver bullet technology that can treat all sites
and all contaminants," said Kurt Pennell, professor and chair of the
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Tufts University, and a
leading expert in groundwater remediation.
The most ubiquitous treatment technology used to clean up the water basins
in and around LA County is what is described as "pump and treat" - when
water is drawn from polluted aquifers, treated to remove contaminants before
being discharged to a water treatment facility or released to a surface
water body.
"In situ" technologies, such as bioremediation (the use of natural organisms
to degrade pollutants), and chemical oxidation (the injection of compounds
such as permanganate and hydrogen peroxide into contaminated aquifers), are
designed to break down the contaminants into nontoxic byproducts without
bringing the contaminated groundwater to the surface.
Source zone technologies are designed to treat the highly contaminated soil
and groundwater near the spill location. These methods include thermal
remediation (heating the subsurface to more easily recover volatile
contaminants), chemical flushing (the injection of surfactants and
solvents), as well as "dig and haul" of toxic soils near the surface.
Those at the cutting edge of science use these sorts of technologies either
in series or in parallel, said Pennel. "For example, one could apply
surfactant flushing or thermal treatment to rapidly remove large quantities
of contaminant mass, and then apply bioremediation to treat residual
contamination over a longer time frame."
The greatest problem, as always, is cost.
"The trade-off between cost and time, and regulatory requirements [and]
treatment goals are important considerations at most sites," he said.
OIL REGULATORS ADMITTED TO WRONGLY ISSUING NEARLY 500 PERMITS FOR OIL
INDUSTRY WASTE DISPOSAL WELLS THAT VIOLATE FEDERAL AND STATE LAW.
But other problems muddy the waters. In a recent paper, Pennell discussed
how the most important idea to arise from the past decade of research, and
perhaps the most contentious, has been the "recognition that the scientific
community may not currently have the ability to develop technologies to
restore all contaminated groundwater sites."
Both the hydrogeology and geology of the cleanup site similarly complicates
the process, agreed Ken Manning. "The geology is a definite barrier because
what you're doing is pumping from an area that you cannot see," he said.
Failures in the Regulation of Oil Field Waste
Then there's the issue of ongoing groundwater contamination, in which the
state's oil companies are playing a part. The Brown administration's
"underground injection control" regulations in effect in April were seen by
environmentalists as a kick in the teeth to those pushing to better regulate
the disposal of oil field wastewater into underground aquifers.
Earlier this year, it came to light that oil regulators admitted to wrongly
issuing nearly 500 permits for oil industry waste disposal wells that
violate federal and state law, while more than 2,000 enhanced oil recovery
wells are also operating illegally in protected aquifers, the Center for
Biological Diversity found.
Instead of levying penalties, the state's Division of Oil, Gas and
Geothermal Resources has shut down just 23 of the hundreds of illegal wells
that have dumped billions of gallons of hazardous oil waste into protected
aquifers in California, including those in the San Fernando and Central
Water basins, according to a report by the Center for Biological Diversity.
The Center for Biological Diversity's calculations show how these illegal
disposal wells dump an average 27 million gallons of oil waste a day into
protected aquifers in California. Though state regulators insisted in March
that there has been no "drinking water" contamination from these oil and gas
disposal wells.
"It's completely irresponsible and shortsighted to sacrifice these aquifers
to the oil industries just because it's cheaper for them to dispose of their
wastewater that way," said Hollin Kretzmann, staff attorney at the Center
for Biological Diversity.
There are hundreds of chemicals that are known to have adverse human health
effects that are used in fracking fluids, said Kretzmann, adding that these
fluids are "oftentimes impossible to clean up."
A Dearth of Information
Because of ongoing pollution, as well as an inadequate network of monitoring
wells, not enough is known about the full extent of the environmental damage
to LA County's aquifers - though there have been efforts to fill the gaps.
A US Geological Survey and WRD groundwater study last year found how
"contaminated groundwater found at shallow depths in the northeastern
portion of the Central Groundwater Basin could migrate to greater depths
where many drinking water supply wells are located." And the UCLA Luskin
Center for Innovation released in June a 52-page report on the 228
government and private entities that deliver water in LA County, "... and
how vulnerable or resilient they are to withstanding pressures from droughts
and climate change."
Drawing stats from six different federal and state databases, the report
found that 40 percent of community water systems serving Los Angeles County
had a "principal contaminant detected in an active raw or active untreated
drinking-water well at a concentration above a Maximum Contaminant Level on
two or more occasions between 2002 and 2010."
What is more, of all of the government and private community water systems
in the county, 75 percent of them suffer from at least one vulnerability
sufficient to put its users at risk.
And one of those community water systems can be found in Maywood.
The Maywood Pilot Project
Nestled in the southeast portion of LA and flanked on its starboard side by
the LA River, Maywood is a small, flat and tightly knit, little city of less
than 30,000 residents. As is typical for this particular slice of LA, the
city was built around car and aircraft manufacturers like Ford, Chrysler,
Willys-Overland and Lockheed. And in the shadow of this long industrial
legacy, has come the inevitable tailwind of toxic pollution.
Indeed, Maywood is home to the Pemaco Superfund Site - a former chemical
mixing facility that closed in 1991, though not before the plant had spent
decades releasing a cocktail of toxic chemicals such as PCB, TCE and vinyl
chloride, a known carcinogen, into Maywood's groundwater. Remediation has
been ongoing since 1997 and is expected to continue well into the future.
WITH ONGOING REMEDIATION COMES THE THREAT OF "EMERGING CONTAMINANTS" - THOSE
CHEMICALS THAT SOMETIMES AREN'T PROPERLY REMEDIATED BECAUSE NOT ENOUGH IS
KNOWN ABOUT THEM.
Over the past few years, Maywood has courted attention to its water problems
by virtue of a very public spat over tap-water discoloration - a result of
manganese in the water, which officials insist isn't harmful. More
worryingly though, TCE was found in some of the wells used by the Maywood
Mutual Water Company No. 3, one of three private companies responsible for
water supplies to the city.
The discovery of TCE is one of the reasons why the Maywood Mutual Water
Company No. 3 was targeted for a pilot project that has sprung from
thrice-annual, multiagency "convenings."
Jane Williams, executive director of California Communities Against Toxics,
said Maywood was also targeted for the project because of its "history of
strong partnerships between environmental justice groups, the local
government and regulatory agencies."
"We hope to be able to create a strong linkage between water remediation and
plume remediation," said Williams. "So, in Maywood, what we're going to be
doing is rehabilitating one of the wells, putting wellhead treatment on. But
we're also seeking to link that to an effort on behalf of the regulatory
agencies to search for the source."
The wellhead treatment part of the project is projected to cost in the
region of $1.5 million - funding is being sought from the $1 billion water
bill passed into effect earlier this year.
"It is getting the state of California involved to use some of its funding
to help clean up groundwater," said Ted Johnson, that's a challenge. "The
state has always gone after polluters to investigate sites, but hasn't
really done much at the drinking water source."
"We've got support from all the elements," he added. "Support from Jane
[William]'s group, from the regional and state water boards. We expect to
hear back any day now that funding's on its way."
A green light on the Maywood pilot project coincides with what appears to be
a concerted effort by some to better gauge the full picture of groundwater
contamination throughout the county.
In 2017, the Department of Toxic Substance Control (DTSC) and the EPA are
set to launch their Spatial Prioritization Geographic Information Tool, an
amalgamation of a variety of existing databases that will help investigators
better understand just how to identify and tackle source zones of
contamination. Then there are the broader cleanups slated for each of the
major basins in the county.
The LADWP, for example, is ramping up remediation efforts in the San
Fernando Valley with plans to pump as much as $800 million into building two
separate plants that will make up part of the world's largest groundwater
treatment center.
"The next phase of remediation efforts will be larger in its scope than the
first," said Gary Reed. And he pointed to how the new plants will be
designed to better siphon out those contaminants that are "not removed with
the current system," such as hexavalent chromium. As it stands, hexavalent
chromium-contaminated water is dumped into the sanitary sewer, said Reed.
Which leads to yet another underlying issue: a fear by many
environmentalists of over-reliance on technologies such as pump-and-treat to
remediate groundwater pollution.
"The authorities have estimated that they're going to have to pump and treat
at the Del Amo site for 5,000 years, rather than aggressively going in after
the contamination," said Cynthia Babich, director of the Del Amo Action
Committee. Del Amo is the site of a Superfund cleanup that has been ongoing
since 1992.
"What happens when they don't go in and completely remove the
[contamination] is that the communities are left with this burden of trying
to make sure people come back and look at it again for years, 5,000 years in
this case," she added.
With ongoing remediation comes the threat of "emerging contaminants" - those
chemicals that sometimes aren't properly remediated because not enough is
known about them - making their way into drinking water supplies, said
Babich.
"We have a chemical here, pCBSA, that we don't know a lot about. But they
determined, without very much known about it, that they could pump it back
into groundwater that didn't have pCBSA in it at 25 parts-per-million, even
though other chemicals are getting cleaned up to the parts-per-billion,"
said Babich.
The chemical pCBSA is a by-product from the manufacturing of the banned
pesticide DDT, but there have been no long-term toxicity or cancer studies
done on pCBSA as yet.
"We were able to get information on this issue to Barbara Lee [director of
the DTSC] in a timely manner," said Babich. "She has not signed off on
allowing this to happen. And that is a big, big thing."
Daniel Ross is an LA based journalist who regularly contributes to The
Guardian, Vice Magazine and The Huffington Post, among others.
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