Source: http://www.ocregister.com, September 24, 2015
By: Aaron Orlowski
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has taken over cleanup of the northern portion of the largest groundwater basin supplying drinking water to Orange County and is investigating whether to classify it as a Superfund site.
The pollution in the North Orange County Groundwater Basin comes from decades-old manufacturing chemicals that made their way from industrial facilities in Anaheim and Fullerton into the soil and into the groundwater. They have formed a 5-mile-long plume that has shut down four drinking-water wells and may threaten more if not cleaned up.
Though it takes two to three years, Superfund designation could bring federal funds to a groundwater basin that has yet to see a regionwide cleanup effort. EPA leadership also could bring order to what has been a contentious and protracted legal battle over who is obligated to clean the spreading plume of contaminated water.
Orange County gets roughly half its water from the groundwater basin underneath north and central Orange County, and 2.4 million people in 22 cities tap into it. Only a small fraction of the water is contaminated so far, but water managers worry the pollutants will spread.
Superfund status would not prevent residents from drinking the water. The EPA manages Superfund sites that produce a total of 90 million gallons a day of drinking water for Southern California.
Piecemeal cleanup efforts have been ongoing for years in Orange County, with roughly 50 sites completed or in progress, and application of pollutants to the soil has long since stopped. Bill Hunt, the director of special projects at Orange County Water District, the county’s groundwater manager, praised the current cleanup efforts but said more needed to be done.
“If the contaminants were just released on the site yesterday, then a source-area cleanup would be appropriate because it hasn’t impacted the groundwater and hasn’t migrated any distance,” Hunt said. But “they’ve spread with the water several miles down-gradient.”
The county’s main business group, the Orange County Business Council, is unhappy the EPA is involved and denies there’s a regionwide pollution problem.
“There is no major groundwater contamination. That groundwater is actually safe,” said Lucy Dunn, the CEO of the business council. She said she believes the old adage, “the solution to pollution is dilution.”
A Superfund designation would harm the county’s image, Dunn said. “It affects economic development. It affects the ability of Anaheim and Fullerton to attract businesses. It gives our residents discomfort with the water coming out of the tap.”
Twelve years ago, the OCWD started suing businesses above contaminated sites to force them to cough up money to pay for a regional cleanup effort. Nine businesses have paid $21.4 million in settlement money, while three lawsuits for three contaminated regions are stuck in appeals, including one for the North Basin.
It’s not clear how the EPA’s involvement in groundwater cleanup would affect the lawsuits.
The EPA will soon finish a preliminary probe to see if the basin’s problems are severe enough to place it on a priority list. From there, a formal review starts – a two- to three-year process that requires asking the governor’s opinion, an initial rule writing, a public comment period and finalization of a rule.
In California, the EPA takes the governor’s opinion seriously and the agency usually doesn’t pursue Superfund status without his concurrence. Only if it’s placed on the Superfund list would the North Basin site be eligible for federal funds, though the polluters may also be required to pay.
The North Basin resembles other groundwater Superfund sites, with legacy industrial contaminants that have migrated beyond their source and co-mingled to the point where it’s hard to tell which pollutants came from which businesses – businesses that may not still exist.
Forty years ago, some Superfund sites in Los Angeles County looked like the North Basin today, said John Lyons, the acting assistant director of the EPA’s Region 9 Superfund Division.
“This looks like an opportunity to nip a problem in the bud and avoid some bigger and more widespread problem like in the L.A. area,” Lyons said.
The EPA got involved in the North Basin after OCWD approached it in 2013 with concerns about the growing plume of pollution, Lyons said. OCWD has offered to assist or even lead investigations into the groundwater contamination, an offer that is very rare for such an agency, Lyons said.
Since it isn’t a polluter, OCWD can’t be mandated to do any of the cleanup, however.
While the EPA’s effort will address the regionwide plume, the cleanup efforts at individual sites will continue to cut off the pollution at the source and are part of a comprehensive cleanup. Those cleanups are coordinated by the state Department of Toxic Substances Control and the Santa Ana Regional Water Quality Control Board, both of which are also working with EPA.
Orange County’s most prominent recent Superfund site was the 4,700-acre El Toro Marine Base, which was added to the list in 1990 and removed in January 2014.