U.S. Senate approves fund
for California groundwater cleanup

By Anna Molin, Bay City News Service

September 30, 2006

The establishment of a $25 million federal fund to reimburse local water authorities in the Santa Ana watershed and Santa Clara Valley for perchlorate contamination cleanup came one step closer to reality Friday after the U.S. Senate authorized the provision.

The terms are included in the National Heritage Act of 2005, which must still receive presidential approval.

The measure sets up a California Basin Groundwater Remediation Fund that will oversee the cleanup reimbursements in the Santa Ana watershed and Santa Clara Valley, where the groundwater contains some of the highest concentrations of perchlorate contamination in California, according to U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein's office.

High doses of perchlorate, a chemical used in explosives, rockets and missiles, have been linked to impaired thyroid function and could lead to neurological impairment in fetuses and infants and metabolic disorders.

According to Feinstein's office, perchlorate has been found in food grown in the Santa Clara Valley where crops are sometimes irrigated by contaminated groundwater.

"The funds approved by the Senate today will reimburse local cleanup efforts to remove the contamination of perchlorate from the groundwater used by hundreds of thousands of people in the Inland Empire and the Santa Clara Valley,'' Feinstein said in a statement Friday. "The more we learn about the potential health risks from perchlorate contamination, the more cause for concern. So, these funds will make a real difference in ensuring that California's communities will no longer have to rely on exorbitant costs to have access to drinking water free of perchlorate contamination.''

The state Department of Health Services, meanwhile, is in the middle of a public comment period on setting a Maximum Containment Level (MCL) for perchlorate in drinking water.

The proposed maximum standard of contamination is 6 parts per billion, the same as the public health goal for perchlorate established by the California Environmental Protection Agency's Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA) in 2004.

Testing of nearly 7,000 drinking water sources in California in 1999 showed that about 450 sources in approximately 110 public water systems contained perchlorate.

The public comment period ends Nov. 3. A public hearing is scheduled at the California Department of Health Services' auditorium at 1500 Capitol Ave. in Sacramento at 10 a.m. on Oct. 30.

For more information visit: http://www.dhs.ca.gov/ps/ddwem/chemicals/perchl/perchlindex.htm.

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