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San Bernardino Sun Rialto ready for showdown on perchlorate |
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Article Launched: 08/05/2007 12:00:00 AM PDT Rialto, site of some of the worst perchlorate contamination in the country, faces a critical battle later this month in its years-long fight to get rid of the pollutant, and to have the polluters pay for the aggravation. At a state water board hearing in Rialto, to begin Aug. 21 and take six days, the city hopes to achieve results and win cleanup and abatement orders that have eluded it for years. After finding little relief at either the federal or regional level, when the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency held back and the Santa Ana Regional Water Quality Control board faltered, the city now has its sights set on the state hearing, where the state Water Resource Control Board is prosecuting three of the alleged corporate polluters. They are accused of indiscriminately dumping perchlorate, the main ingredient in rocket fuel and other explosives, where it would seep into the groundwater and then not doing anything about it. Hence, a six-mile-long plume of perchlorate is steadily advancing across the city, toward Colton and beyond, from the site of a World War II ordnance depot later used as a manufacturing site by large defense contractors and fireworks companies. On the west end, it is coming from the Mid-Valley Sanitary Landfill, which San Bernardino County bought and supervisors have belatedly accepted responsibility for - albeit, largely because Rialto won a cleanup and abatement order from the regional water board in November 2005 that forced the issue. On the east end, perchlorate flows from a site used over the years by B.F. Goodrich Corp., Emhart (now Black & Decker Inc.), Pryo Spectaculars and other manufacturers. And Rialto is determined that it will have the same luck proving its point against those companies that it had with the county. Goodrich, Black & Decker and Pryo Spectaculars will be on the stand at the hearing in two weeks - along with 15 expert witnesses. The well-heeled companies have delayed that hearing four times so far. But Rialto is confident that the facts will win out, when it finally has its say in court. Barring that, the city always can fall back on its federal lawsuit, filed in 2004 against 42 defendants - including those being prosecuted by the state board. But it shouldn't have to come to that. The city, and ratepayers, have waited long enough for resolution. The city's strategy is simple: to present enough evidence, accumulated through intensive - and expensive - investigation, to show that the suspected corporate polluters are the ones responsible for fouling the groundwater. And that they should not only clean up the perchlorate, but pay for it as well. The total cost could reach $300 million. Local agencies already have shut down contaminated wells or established wellhead treatment, so it's not as if residents are drinking contaminated water. But the cleanup is costly. And it could be never-ending. That is, unless the perchlorate is stopped in its tracks. That's where Rialto's strategy differs from other water purveyors. Rather than stop at cleanup of the water, which is an ongoing process, city leaders are determined to stop the pollution at its source. Otherwise, the perchlorate will keep on coming, and the need for cleanup will persist, year after year. But despite its painstaking approach, the city has run into many a brick wall. Which is not to say that Rialto isn't justified in trying to get those who dumped the perchlorate to pay for the cleanup - rather than having residents and ratepayers continue to foot the bill. And, indeed, the companies responsible need to step up to the plate and accept that charge. They need to become good corporate citizens and do what's right - not only for the sake of their communities, but the sake of their own integrity. The health and well-being of thousands is in their hands. Perchlorate is a threat to functioning of the thyroid and possibly mental and nervous-system development. Councilman Ed Scott's call for a study to determine just how much of a risk perchlorate poses to residents' health is fully warranted. For Rialto, it's become something of a crusade. Because the city has found some of the greatest concentrations of perchlorate in the nation, at 5,000 to 10,000 parts per billion - the highest level found in a domestic water supply - city leaders hold a longer-range view of why it is so important to get to the bottom of the problem, and why it is imperative to flush out the perchlorate, once and for all. Because if they don't hold true to their mission, many more communities down the line will become the next victims of a menace that continues to spread - with the perchlorate plume steadily creeping forward, inch by inch, foot by foot, year by year.
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