News Coverage
State floats water goal
PERCHLORATE: Critics blast the guideline that lets agencies alter when they notify consumers
Published March 12, 2004
California released its public health goal for perchlorate Thursday, saying that as much as 6 parts of the rocket-fuel chemical in a billion parts of drinking water is safe for everyone.
Water officials said the decision gives them a clear target as they attempt to clean up extensive perchlorate contamination found in Inland drinking-water supplies. But environmental groups said the state's health goal isn't enough to protect people with thyroid ailments, infants and pregnant women and their unborn babies.
Several water-agency officials said the state's health goal won't change their efforts to remove perchlorate from Inland drinking water. Wells have been found to contain as much as 820 parts per billion of the chemical. Some companies believed to be the source of the perchlorate also said they intend to press ahead with cleanup efforts, regardless where the health goal is set.
Dieter Wirtzfeld, Riverside's assistant director of public utilities, said the city's goal all along has been to get perchlorate below 4 parts per billion.
"That's still our goal," he said. With the help of Lockheed Martin Corp., one of the suspected pollution sources, Riverside is building three treatment plants to remove perchlorate from city well water.
Officials from Redlands and Rialto echoed Wirtzfeld's assessment.
California's action places it in the forefront of a scientific and regulatory debate over just how much perchlorate the public can safely consume in its water. Although some states have urged certain consumers to avoid perchlorate-contaminated water, no other state is believed to be as far along in writing regulations governing perchlorate in water delivered to the household tap.
Release of the state's health goal allows California health officials to develop an enforceable drinking-water standard, an effort that could take a year to complete. The public health goal is a guideline that provides a scientific foundation to set the regulatory standard. State health officials must try to get any drinking-water standard as close to the public health goal as possible while also considering the economic and technical feasibility of doing so.
With the health goal now at 6 parts per billion, state health officials adjusted upward the point at which water purveyors are urged to notify consumers of perchlorate contamination. That "action level," which has been at 4 parts per billion since 2002, is now set at 6 parts per billion.
'Margin of safety'
Some environmentalists say the state backed away from a tougher health goal because of pressure from industries and the Department of Defense, which face substantial cleanup costs for perchlorate pollution across the nation.
"I believe the state caved," said Bill Walker, vice president of the West Coast branch of the Environmental Working Group.
But Allen Hirsch, a spokesman for the state Office of Environmental Health Hazards Assessment, said the health goal is based on the best available science and the agency's assessment of how much perchlorate the public can consume in water without a health risk.
The health goal includes a substantial margin of safety, he said. "The public health goal is not a dividing line of what's safe and what's dangerous."
State water-quality officials say they will continue their efforts to investigate and clean up perchlorate pollution from a north Rialto industrial site that has contaminated at least 20 drinking-water wells, said Kurt Berchtold, assistant executive director of the state Santa Ana Regional Water Quality Control Board.
But Berchtold also said water providers may now have an easier time dealing with perchlorate. Of the 171 perchlorate-contaminated wells in San Bernardino, Riverside and Orange counties, 72 have perchlorate concentrations of 6 parts per billion or less.
Perchlorate keeps the fire burning in solid-fuel rockets, road flares and fireworks. A type of salt, it dissolves easily in water and has been found in hundreds of wells in California, in the Colorado River and in the water supplies of at least 22 states. Past disposal practices, industrial accidents and agricultural fertilizers are suspected as the sources of the contamination.
In sufficient levels, perchlorate is known to disrupt the thyroid's ability to produce hormones crucial in regulating metabolism and the growth of infants. The Defense Department, one of the largest consumers of perchlorate, has contended that 200 parts per billion of perchlorate has no lasting effect on humans.
Guidelines and costs
The state's effort may be complicated by a review of perchlorate science now under way by a panel of experts from the National Academies, which provides scientific advice to the federal government. The panel is reviewing the science at the request of several federal agencies, including the Department of Defense and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The EPA, in a 2002 draft report, proposed 1 part per billion of perchlorate as a safe level for humans, but the Pentagon and industries challenged that level as too stringent. The National Academies report is expected later this year.
Massachusetts is using such a guideline in dealing with perchlorate in drinking water.
For two years, the state has advised that pregnant women, children and people with thyroid disorders should not drink water with more than 1 part per billion of the rocket-fuel chemical. The advisory was based on an extensive review of health studies and literature, said Edmund Coletta, a spokesman for Massachusetts' Department of Environmental Protection.
Eight states have advisories for perchlorate in drinking water that range from 1 to 18 parts per billion, according to California environmental officials.
Industry officials said they did not expect the health goal to stall efforts to clean perchlorate from Inland groundwater and from the Colorado River.
"We have to reassess what we are doing in our remediation in the Inland area, but we do not expect any major changes," said Lockheed Martin Corp. spokeswoman Gail Rymer.
Lockheed has spent $73 million treating or replacing perchlorate-contaminated water that had been used by Riverside, Redlands and Loma Linda. The pollution is blamed on a former rocket factory in Mentone.
Similarly, Kerr-McGee Corp. will continue the cleanup of what EPA officials say is the nation's largest perchlorate plume, spreading from a former factory near Las Vegas into the Colorado River.
The health goal could spare Metropolitan Water District of Southern California from having to spend millions of dollars to remove perchlorate from the Colorado River water it imports. Perchlorate levels in the river are about 4 parts per billion.