SACRAMENTO
– The Perchlorate Contamination Prevention Act passed the Senate
Environmental Quality Committee with a vote of 7-0. The bill now
goes to the full Senate.
SACRAMENTO – The Perchlorate Contamination Prevention Act passed the Senate Environmental Quality Committee with a vote of 7-0. The bill now goes to the full Senate.
AB 826, authored by Assemblywoman Hannah-Beth Jackson, D-Santa Barbara, would require any facility that manufactures or stores the toxic substance perchlorate to monitor the area under the facility to prevent contamination of groundwater supplies. It also would require monitoring of drinking water supplies and an integrated strategy for state agencies to tackle the growing problem presented by perchlorate.
It would also require monitoring of drinking water supplies and an integrated strategy for state agencies to tackle the growing problem presented by perchlorate.
The measure is timely given recent discovery of a plume of the chemical starting at an former Olin Corp. highway flare factory in Morgan Hill and spreading to several municipal wells in Morgan Hill, as well as hundreds of private wells south of the city. It has also been found in the Colorado River and Lake Mead as well as communities in the Sacramento and Inland Empire areas.
According to the California EPA, scientific studies have suggested perchlorate can disrupt thyroid hormone production. Inhibited thyroid function can result in hypothyroidism and in rare cases, thyroid tumors.
