Attorney Steven Hoch thinks it
’s important to debunk what he sees as myths surrounding
perchlorate – even if his efforts aren’t always appreciated.
Attorney Steven Hoch thinks it’s important to debunk what he sees as myths surrounding perchlorate – even if his efforts aren’t always appreciated.
Take, for example, the recent day-long seminar on perchlorate in groundwater, held in Sacramento. Several times during the event, attorneys were blamed for complicating matters.
Hoch, a leading attorney on water quality issues who represents the City of Morgan Hill in its negotiations with Olin Corp., used his time before the microphone to address misinformation regarding perchlorate – and defend his profession. Hoch is a member of the Hatch and Parent law firm, based in Southern California.
“Sometimes we’re a necessary evil,” he said of attorneys, emphasizing that his remarks would be personal opinion from experience and not details from current lawsuits.
“We live in a risk-adverse society,” he said. “People want to feel – and be – protected. Who gets skewered from missing water” when wells are shut down because of perchlorate?
Things get complicated, he said, when municipal wells are closed at the action level, as Morgan Hill and the San Martin municipal systems have done, instead of the maximum contaminant level.
The MCL is the point at which water can no longer be sold. The MCL has not yet been set by the state, but the California Department of Health Services is expected to establish a maximum contaminant level in January 2004. Some experts predict that the DHS will set the level at 4 ppb, the current action level.
“If a water company puts in an $18 million-treatment system and goes to the PUC (Public Utility Commission) to ask for a rate increase, they are told ‘no’ – it’s only the action level,” Hoch said.
Companies that are the source of perchlorate tend to refuse to indemnify (to insure against future loss or damage) because “it’s only the action level,” Hoch said.
Cross claims for present and future damage, Hoch believes, need to be addressed at the state and federal level because they are so complicated.
Such a cross claim occurred when Aerojet – the responsible source of the Rancho Cordova plume – sued the Sacramento County Water Company because it moved the plume by drawing water further out, therefore increasing the clean up costs, Aerojet claimed.
Morgan Hill City Attorney Helene Leichter said a similar scenario might be possible regarding Morgan Hill’s installation of treatment plants on its Nordstrom and Tennant wells, which is under way.
Hoch said he has two goals regarding perchlorate contamination: to get the courts to resolve these issues and to let the technical people keep working on the problems.
“Let the process work; don’t get in the way,” he said. ”My goal is not to fleece people but to solve problems.”
The lengthy case against Aerojet will come to trial, Hoch said, on Sept. 22 in Department 13 of Sacramento County Superior Court.
Hoch also addressed the issue of Chilean fertilizer, frequently blamed as a source of perchlorate during the Sacramento conference.
“It’s all b.s.,” he said.
An EPA report found the fertilizer to be a potential source of contamination but later recanted, Hoch said, because only a small amount of actual Chilean fertilizer was ever reported.
“Stop with this stuff,” he said. “They wouldn’t use it in the Central Valley because it contains so much salt. Pre-World War II, why would farmers use expensive fertilizer when they could use manure?”
The Central Valley is one of the largest agricultural areas in the world, not home to just fields of plants, but also to animals including cattle, hogs and chickens – all abundant manure providers.
“Let’s focus on the manufacture of certain items,” Hoch said.
Perchlorate is known as a byproduct of the manufacture of rocket fuel, fireworks and, in the case of Olin Corp. in Morgan Hill, highway safety flares. The ability to test for perchlorate levels made a quantum leap in the 1990s, Hoch said. And that leap came from so-called rocket scientists.
Hoch disputed the frequently repeated assertions that perchlorate’s dangers were unknown and perchlorate levels were undetectable until 1996. Hoch said that low levels of perchlorate were, in fact, detected, tested and observed “way before the quantum leap.”
Did people know it was a hazard?
“You bet,” he said, noting that doctors stopped using it in medicine. “Doctors are smart enough to know they couldn’t use it any more.”
Leichter said Hoch was hired to advise Morgan Hill officials on everything to do with perchlorate and has represented the city in its negotiations with Olin since July 2002.
“He knows this area backwards and forwards,” said Leichter. “He’s very well respected in this area.”
