[CPEO-MEF] Perchlorate cleanup proposal in Santa Clara County (CA)

[Lenny Siegel <lsiegel@cpeo.org>]

Plan to clean up wells to be unveiled today
TOXIN TAINTS WATER IN SOUTH COUNTY

By Paul Rogers and HongDao Nguyen
San Jose Mercury News (CA)
December 14, 2004

Nearly two years after the discovery that perchlorate, a chemical linked
to thyroid disorders, had contaminated hundreds of drinking water wells
around Morgan Hill and Gilroy, the first outlines of a plan to clean it
up have been released.

The Santa Clara Valley Water District drafted the plan, along with
officials from Morgan Hill, Gilroy and Santa Clara County. It is
scheduled to be made public today by water district officials at 1:30
p.m. in the Gilroy City Council chambers.

Perchlorate is found in highway flares, fireworks and rocket fuel. The
pollution seeped into groundwater from a flare manufacturing plant on
Tennant Road in Morgan Hill. Although there are at least 19 other
significant perchlorate plumes in California, many from former defense
companies, the 10-mile plume stretching from Morgan Hill to Highway 152
near Gilroy affects more private wells than any of the others statewide.

The now-bulldozed flare plant, owned by Olin of Norwalk, Conn.,
manufactured highway flares from 1955 to 1996. Olin has taken
responsibility for the pollution and is required by the state to provide
bottled water to hundreds of affected residents.

The new plan calls for Olin to:

* Install monitoring wells to better understand the shape and depth of
the plume.

* Halt the plume's spread by building extraction wells to pump and
filter it out.

* Provide hundreds of residents of the area whose water has been
affected with individual treatment systems for each well -- potentially
at a cost of several thousand dollars a home.

...

For the entire article, see
http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/politics/10412626.htm

-- 


Lenny Siegel
Director, Center for Public Environmental Oversight
c/o PSC, 278-A Hope St., Mountain View, CA 94041
Voice: 650/961-8918 or 650/969-1545
Fax: 650/961-8918
<lsiegel@cpeo.org>
http://www.cpeo.org
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