Rialto council to vote tonight on keeping 'zero tolerance' perchlorate policy
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10:00 PM PDT on Monday, March 17, 2008
Rialto should stick to its standard for removing the chemical perchlorate from city-owned drinking water wells, even though the state of California has set a less stringent standard, attorneys for the city have recommended.
The Rialto City Council is scheduled to act on that issue during its meeting tonight.
Rialto residents get their drinking water either from two private agencies -- West Valley Water District and Fontana Water Company -- or from the city's own utility, the water division of the Public Works Department.
The city provides drinking water to about half of Rialto's residents -- roughly 11,000 connections. To filter out the perchlorate that contaminates the groundwater under Rialto and to make the water safe for drinking, the city installed equipment on three of its wells.
Tonight, special legal counsel for the city will advise the council to reaffirm Rialto's "zero tolerance policy" on perchlorate. The city first adopted the policy in 2003, and reconfirmed that stance in 2005.
"Under this policy, the Water Division is to shut down any municipal well in which the perchlorate is detected, and not to serve water from that well until the Water Division can reliably remove the perchlorate down to the point that perchlorate cannot be detected in the treated water," attorney Susan Trager, the city's special counsel on perchlorate matters, wrote in a report.
Equipment on city wells can't detect perchlorate at levels less than 4 parts per billion, Trager said by phone on Monday.
In October, the state Department of Public Health adopted a standard for perchlorate in drinking water, setting the maximum allowable contaminant level at 6 parts per billion.
But Trager, in her report, explained that it wouldn't save the city any money to relax its own standard to the perchlorate level that the state of California says is acceptable. It wouldn't be worth the cost and effort of recalibrating the equipment on the city's three wells, she advised.
In the treatment process, the perchlorate gets stuck to tiny resin beads in the water. "They molecularly attract the perchlorate and filter it out," explained Francis Logan, an attorney with Trager's Irvine-based firm, which specializes in water and land-use law.
Perchlorate is an ingredient in fireworks, munitions and solid rocket propellant. During World War II, the federal government purchased 2,800 acres of land in northern Rialto to build storage facilities for rockets and munitions, which contained perchlorate.
After the war, the government sold the land. In the ensuing decades, assorted defense contractors, fireworks manufacturers and other companies have done business on the land, and the city alleges that all parties share responsibility for the perchlorate contamination of Rialto's groundwater.
The land is roughly north of Highland Avenue and west of Locust Avenue.
The perchlorate plume polluting the Rialto-Colton Groundwater Basin is believed to be about six miles long, and to spread at a rate of about three feet per day, according to city officials.
Reach Mary Bender at 909-806-3056 or mbender@PE.com
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