Kudos to San Martin residents Sylvia Hamilton and Bob Cerruti
for volunteering their time and energy to serve on the San Martin
Perchlorate Advisory Committee established by the state Regional
Water Quality Control Board. Hamilton will serve as chairman and
Cerruti as vice-chairman of the new panel that is intended to give
the community a voice in the perchlorate cleanup process.
Kudos to San Martin residents Sylvia Hamilton and Bob Cerruti for volunteering their time and energy to serve on the San Martin Perchlorate Advisory Committee established by the state Regional Water Quality Control Board. Hamilton will serve as chairman and Cerruti as vice-chairman of the new panel that is intended to give the community a voice in the perchlorate cleanup process.
Their long-term and deep ties to the San Martin and South Valley communities will serve them and the region well as we begin to tackle the contentious problem of removing perchlorate from groundwater.
We applaud Hamilton and Cerruti for their enthusiasm and encourage other civic-minded community members to join the board, which still has openings available.
At the same time, it’s wise to remember that enthusiasm taken to the extreme is zealotry. As the adage says, enthusiasm is a good engine but it needs intelligence for a driver.
After years of observing the tone and tenor of political debate in San Martin, we have reason to be concerned that advisory committee members might make enemies of people and institutions it needs as allies if they become overzealous in performing their watchdog role.
South County residents have been harmed by the perchlorate contamination, which Olin Corp. has acknowledged stems from its now-closed road flare factory site at Railroad and Tennant avenues in Morgan Hill. Hundreds of private wells have tested positive for actionable levels of perchlorate and four municipal wells have been closed in Morgan Hill, one permanently, due to the contamination.
We want officials to hold Olin’s feet to the fire. The company should repay every dime in expenses incurred by area residents, companies, agencies and governments due to its perchlorate pollution. We want the the advisory committee to carefully review every cleanup proposal and advocate strongly for the best plans for South Valley.
We also urge area residents to attend the committee’s meetings, which are now and ought to remain open to the public, to become educated and to voice their concerns about the perchlorate problem.
But we don’t want personalities to become an issue. The essence of economist Milton Friedman’s witty warning, “Hell hath no fury like a bureaucrat scorned” ought to be in the back of everyone’s mind. We need to keep all the stakeholders, from Olin Corp. to the federal Environmental Protection Agency, from water district officials to local elected representatives, working together toward the same goal: a quick and effective cleanup of the perchlorate contamination.
To achieve that goal, we need diplomacy, not divisiveness. No one is happy that perchlorate is snaking its way through South Valley groundwater. We urge the advisory committee members, and the community as a whole, to work cooperatively to find and implement the best methods remove it.
Details: A community-wide meeting on the perchlorate problem is scheduled for Saturday, May 3, at 10 a.m. at Gavilan Community College. For more information on the community advisory committee, call Harvey Packard of the Regional Water Quality Control Board at (805) 542-4639. The committee’s next scheduled meeting will be held on Thursday, May 8, at 10 a.m. at the San Martin Lion’s Club, 12415 Murphy Ave.
