The City of Morgan Hill has a well contaminated with perchlorate. The city must treat the water, and it wants Olin Corp. to pay for it.
Part of Olin’s defense is that there are other sources of perchlorate contamination. It is looking for said sources. It has tested runoff from the freeway. It has looked for naturally occurring perchlorate from rock degradation. It suggested that the Regional Water Quality Control Board check a mushroom farm located near the city’s contaminated well.
The Regional Board sent a researcher, expecting to find nothing. However, when the researchers sampled the wash water in a retention pond, they found perchlorate. They then tested four other mushroom farms. Three of the five had perchlorate contamination.
The board released this information to Olin, the city of Morgan Hill, the city of Gilroy, the county, and the water district, before telling the growers the test results. The water district in turn sent out an e-mail to all these people stating erroneously that the perchlorate was introduced by bleach used to clean the mushrooms. Actually, the bleach is used to clean the floors, workers’ feet, and equipment. Sanitation is vital in the food industry.
The water district’s e-mails listed the businessnames, addresses, and test results. This is the first time in memory the board has released information like that directly tied to a property owner.
The Regional Board now says that bleach stored at room temperature reacts to form perchlorates. It doesn’t know how much is getting into retention ponds, or whether it gets into the groundwater at some point.
The data is incomplete. At least two and possibly more of the wells on the mushroom farms previously tested positive for perchlorate. However, when the researchers found perchlorate in the ponds, they did not test the wells on the same day. So there is no way to know how much perchlorate was in the well water before it ever entered the wash water systems.
Moreover, bleach is a common sanitizer used by the cities of Gilroy and Morgan Hill at their water treatment plants, by well drillers to sanitize new and contaminated wells, by private and public water companies, and by residents in search of whiter whites.
Four conclusions are plain.
First, more data is needed. Is there perchlorate in the mushroom farm water before the farms add bleach? Does it leach from the retention ponds? How far does it get? Does the perchlorate plume map indicate mushroom farm point sources?
Second, the Regional Board and the water district should not have informed all and sundry before notifying the mushroom growers. They need to apologize.
Third, Olin Corporation is fishing for co-defendants. Mere accusations do not constitute the necessary preponderance of evidence. They better come up with better data than we have seen so far.
Fourth, the affected mushroom farms need to clean up their clean-up process. There has been a lot of local work done on perchlorate clean up. No need to reinvent the wheel.
