Recommendation on perchlorate removal goes to regional board
Hoping to expedite cleanup of a perchlorate plume flowing south from the former Olin Corp. site in Morgan Hill, the Santa Clara Valley Water District Board of Directors voted unanimously Tuesday to endorse a new cleanup plan.
“We hope our plan has a great deal of influence on what the Regional Water Quality Control Board requests from Olin,” said Stan Williams, chief executive officer for the water district. “We hope the component elements are the same as what will end up in the plan the Regional Board approves.”
Speaking at the meeting Tuesday, David Athey, who’s in charge of the Olin site for the Regional Board, encouraged the Water District Board to accept the plan but said his organization cannot officially endorse it.
“Ultimately it’s Olin’s responsibility to provide a cleanup plan, and it’s up to the Water Board to approve that plan,” Athey said. “The Regional Board will continue to push Olin at an accelerated pace.”
To date, the Regional Board hasn’t asked Olin to submit such a plan. The company is in the process of cleaning the site and formulating an updated plan to monitor the plume, which it’s expected to submit in January.
The Water District plan calls for a complete cleanup of the plume by 2025. It asks that Olin delineate the hard boundaries of the plume, contain its downward flow and restore uncontaminated water supplies to all groundwater basin users.
Under the plan, Olin would have to install extraction wells that will contain the plume and provide treated water for reuse for irrigation and restocking municipal supplies. It also allows for more discrete remedial options, with methods to treat the water at the point of entry at a particular home, or point of use at a particular sink.
The plan will be funded with Water District reserves, federal grants and money from Morgan Hill that will be refunded by Olin.
Athey said that the Regional Board’s timeline calls for Olin to have a monitoring system for the entire plume in place, with an assessment of its impact, by the end of 2005. By 2006, Olin needs to formulate a long-term water replacement plan for all wells where perchlorate contamination tests at four parts per billion or higher. The company is currently providing bottled water to those users. It should, by that time, also have a cleanup plan.
Athey reiterated Tuesday that the Regional Board hasn’t issued a cleanup and abatement order because of Olin’s continued cooperation. That order will come, he said, when investigation of the plume is complete.
“We want to make sure we put our resources in the right places,” he said. “If we issued an order, all other monitoring and investigation would stop. Now, if Olin stopped doing what they’re doing, we’d order a cleanup in short order.”
William’s said that the Water District board has grown more comfortable with the cleanup process in recent weeks.
“We weren’t as satisfied a few weeks ago, but the pace is picking up,” he said. “The Regional Board and Olin have told us they see things they like in our plan.”
Olin, which is based in Cleveland, did not send a representative to the meeting, but a statement sent by Vice President Curt Richards echoed the company’s previous arguments that it is not responsible for perchlorate that was discovered north of the Tennant Avenue site and that it’s not required to replace water in wells that test below California’s official public health goal of 6 ppb.
The statement did pledge to continue meeting with the Water District and suspend any litigation between the parties.
Perchlorate was discovered at the site in January 2003 and found to have traveled through south Morgan Hill, San Martin east of Monterey Road (largely) and into north Gilroy.
Matt King covers Santa Clara County for The Dispatch. He can be reached at 847-7240 or [email protected]
