Was an underground stream the path perchlorate took from the
Olin Corp. site on Tennant Avenue to the Nordstrom and Condit
wells? Olin says no, but the city and water district are distinctly
interested.
“It’s a suspicion at this point,” said Mike DiMarco, spokesman
for Santa Clara Valley Water District. “Our staff is still
investigating the material.”
Was an underground stream the path perchlorate took from the Olin Corp. site on Tennant Avenue to the Nordstrom and Condit wells?
Olin says no, but the city and water district are distinctly interested.
“It’s a suspicion at this point,” said Mike DiMarco, spokesman for Santa Clara Valley Water District. “Our staff is still investigating the material.”
Olin released a 49-page report with hundreds of pages of charts, graphs and supplementary material on Friday, backing up its claim that it had nothing to do with perchlorate contaminating city wells north of its site.
Olin has repeatedly stated that it intended to accept responsibility for the contamination and has generally followed the regional board’s orders. It paid for a new well to replace the Tennant well, 275-feet south of the Olin site and closed in spring 2002 when high levels of the chemical were found.
But the company began to balk when the contaminated Nordstrom and Condit wells, one mile north of the site, were discovered and the city wanted the same financial treatment.
“We believe we have met all of our commitments to the regional board and to the community of Morgan Hill,” Rick McClure said Wednesday. McClure is Olin’ project manager for the cleanup effort at its former safety flare manufacturing plant at Tennant and Railroad avenues.
Jim Ashcraft, public works director, said he found that the report only briefly alluded to a 1981 USGS (U.S. Geological Survey) study showing the stream.
“They failed to identify a drawing showing a buried underground stream pointing from the Olin site to the northeast,” Ashcraft said. “It could be the preferential pathway to the wells but the report did not suggest how these data could exist.”
“I know Olin thinks this (no connection between its site and the northeast wells) but I hope the others (agencies) won’t believe it,” Ashcraft said.
He said he will have many questions for Olin on Sept. 22, when the company meets with the city, the water district and the state Regional Water Quality Control Board.
City Manager Ed Tewes objected Wednesday to the report’s conclusions.
“We are disappointed in the lack of rigorous analysis,” Tewes said. “The report was clearly not based on monitoring well data but appears to be based on historic data without any real scientific analysis. A complete study would acknowledge the USGS map.”
And, Tewes said the report does not explain away the underground stream.
It is taking the water district, the city and the regional board considerable time to sort through and analyze the hundreds of pages of charts, graphs and supporting material that accompanied the report, and no one is ready to make definite claims until they have.
The city has been trying to get Olin to accept responsibility for perchlorate northeast of the site, even though studies show that the underground aquifer flows predominantly southeast. One possible explanation is that as the northeast wells pumped water it drew perchlorate-laden water north.
Olin disputes this.
“The detections of perchlorate between Morgan Hill and San Jose are completely unconnected to the former flare facility,” the company said in a press release.
McClure, agreed with the report that pumping changed nothing.
“The northern wells have not influenced the water flow,” McClure said Wednesday, “and if there are detections of perchlorate north of Tennant Avenue they come from some other source.”
McClure encouraged the city to look into other possible sources.
DiMarco said last year that several other sources could be considered.
“There used to be several fertilizer plants in the area,” he said. The plants imported “bulldog soda” from Chile, partially composed of sodium perchlorate.
“The source could also be left-over flares or fireworks or even methamphetamine labs,” he said.
Olin operated its plant for 40 years.
United Technology Corp. on Metcalf Road in Coyote Valley tested rocket engines using perchlorate-containing fuel for decades.
“There is plenty of clean water between the UTC plant and city wells,” Ashcraft said.
At the August PCAG meeting Athey announced he had heard of a new tool for identifying where perchlorate originated.
“Some scientists are using a strontium nitrate isotope to “fingerprint” perchlorate in groundwater,” Athey said.
McClure said Olin spent more than $100,000 on the big groundwater flow study, which was reviewed by two other consultants besides MacTech, the consulting firm handling Olin’s technical studies of the area’s groundwater.
“The (huge) report doesn’t necessarily make the case that Olin is trying to make,” said the water district’s DiMarco.
David Athey, the Central Coast Regional Water Quality Board’s project manager for the Morgan Hill/San Martin perchlorate situation, said Wednesday that they, too, were still reviewing the report.
“We will meet with Olin and the city (and the water district) on Sept. 22,” Athey said. “If it looks like they are on the right track, we’ll say go forward. If not, we’ll provide direction to Olin.”
Olin representatives will attend a PCAG (Perchlorate Community Advisory Group) meeting the next day where they will discuss the report and answer questions from a concerned community.
Perchlorate was discovered in early 2003 to have leached from the Olin site through soil and into the aquifer and traveled through south Morgan Hill, San Martin east of Monterey Road and slightly into north Gilroy, contaminating hundreds of wells slightly and dozens significantly. The regional board has been monitoring Olin’s response and has issued orders to the company directing study and free bottled water delivery to residents on affected wells.
The Nordstrom well is now operating with a perchlorate treatment system in place, which cost the city several hundred thousand dollars to lease and tens of thousands annually to maintain and operate. The regional board recently gave the city permission to turn the Tennant well back on, filtering its water through a water district-leased treatment system.
In the meantime, the city temporarily closed the Nordstrom and Condit wells when they showed 5 and 6 parts per billion respectively, stressing the city’s ability to provide water to customers during the summer and causing noticeable deterioration of park lawns. Until this March when the state set 6ppb as a Public Health Goal, 4ppb was the point at which the public had to be notified of perchlorate’s presence in water and at which the city shut down a well as a precaution.
Perchlorate Community Advisory Group meets Thursday, Sept. 23, 7-9pm at the San Martin Lions Club, 12415 Murphy Avenue behind the airport. Details: Sylvia, 683-2667.
