Christopher Ranch Subject to Heavy Fines While Olin Corp Keeps Skating By
Dear Editor,
Christopher Ranch kills a few fish along an eighth of a mile, owns up to it, takes immediate precautions and still faces stiff fines.
Good corporate citizen, and , in ways too numerous to list, a good community citizen.
Olin Corporation pollutes hundreds of wells, covering tens of miles, with a toxic chemical known to be harmful to pregnant women, their unborn children and potentially dangerous to others. Yes, they provided bottled water to the people whose wells were contaminated, but four years after the problem was made public it has not been corrected. AND, the state now allows a 6 parts per billion level of perchlorate in drinking water!
Where are our priorities?
Becky Boyd Lorenzeth, Gilroy
The Golden Quill is awarded occasionally for a well-written letter.
Water District Shouldn’t Be a Part of the Story on Spill in Uvas Creek
Dear Editor,
It is clear that the discharge by a private entity which polluted the water in Uvas Creek was the cause of death for multiple fish.
What is unclear is why the article “Waste Chokes Creek Life” (Feb. 9, 2007) links the accident of one private party to the environmental restoration efforts of the Santa Clara Valley Water District.
Mentioned in the article is an environmental flow study which was developed as part of a collaborative effort that included the California Department of Fish and Game, National Marine Fisheries Service, and local fisheries experts familiar with Uvas Creek. The article implies that had the SCVWD not released water in the summer, the unfortunate death of the fish could have been prevented.
However, because of the experiment of increasing water flows in the summer, growth rates for steelhead trout in the reaches were among the highest in the watershed.
The reality is without the increased water releases, there likely would not be any steelhead trout in Uvas Creek. In spite of one of the driest Januaries in years, the water district has been able to keep a live stream and the creek is healthier than it has been in decades, prior to the spill.
The water district will continue to work with the regulatory agencies and environmental groups to restore the health of the creek.
However, we thought it would only be fair for the community to understand that the water district had no responsibility for a private entity’s spill into the creek.
Stanley M. Williams, CEO,
Santa Clara Valley Water District
Editor’s note: In the story, Keith Anderson, a retired senior fishery biologist with the California Department of Fish and Game, made the link. Anderson’s comments in the story were clear: Taking a calculated gamble, the water district released more water in the summer into the creek to aid in the steelhead restoration project. When it rained very little this winter, additional water couldn’t be released so the conditions were ripe for an environmental problem.
