The Fund For the Environment Speaks Out

Testimony of Ellen Stern Harris on June 5, 2000 before the Los Angeles City Council Environmental Quality Committee:

The Fund for the Environment fully endorses the appropriate reuse of water extracted from sewage, properly treated, and continuously monitored.

We support its transport, in separate piping, as has been done for decades at Irvine Ranch and elsewhere. This is properly for use in industrial cooling applications, on freeway landscapes, golf courses and certain crops. However, we specifically and strongly oppose tertiary treated water, from sewage, being inserted into our potable water supplies.

Our existing, available, groundwater is not just threatened, it is increasingly polluted. A quarter of the wells in the San Gabriel Valley are contaminated by industrial solvents. Santa Monica has had to close some of its wells, due to the infiltration of MTBE.

Most recently the State has ordered Chevron to truck in water to Cambria to compensate for its MTBE pollution of that community’s water. There will be further disclosures of this type, as plumes of such toxins move toward and into other wells. And now Orange County is closing down wells contaminated by a by-product of chlorine: NDMA.

In water quality matters, I speak from experience. I have served on the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board and on the board of directors of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California. The Fund for the Environment’s Science and Medical advisor, Dr. Harvey S. Frey, M.D., Ph.D., and I have also met with the top lab people at L.A. County Sanitation Districts’ pioneer water reclamation plant, at Whittier Narrows. This was when a similar facility was being proposed by the Upper San Gabriel Municipal Water District. Dr. Frey, a Cal Tech grad, came away from our meeting and said that the lab’s techniques and methodologies were then 30 years behind the times. I so testified in court, when Miller Brewery sued to stop the USGMWD’s plans.

Miller ended up settling its suit. It will be extracting its water from a source which will not include any of the treated effluent. I hope that Anheuser-Busch will similarly consider the possible adverse effects of this kind of water on its product. The District also agreed to scale down its plans to a demonstration project. But this demonstration project is still not on line, so we have not had the benefit of lessons it might provide.

As of last week, six years later, the testing protocols have not been changed. They are as inadequate now as they were then. It is the CA. Dept. of Health Services and the L.A. Regional Water Quality Control Board which are responsible for setting such inadequate standards and requiring inadequate monitoring. I believe we can also expect inadequate enforcement.

I knew Don Tillman, before the facility bearing his name was built. I supported its being built. But, that was with the clear understanding that its output was not to be co-mingled with potable supplies. I believe that what is now proposed for the East Valley is a betrayal of the public trust, and of Don Tillman’s intent.

What is driving this seemingly well intentioned, if misguided push for ever-more water extraction from sewage? I believe it may be, in part, to help save the Delta in Northern California, from which we import so much of our water. It may also be to help save Mono Lake, a laudable goal. And it may be to help comply with California’s obligation to limit our take from the Colorado River.

However, with more and more treatment-resistant bacteria and viruses, our society’s health considerations should be paramount. The very young, and aged, and others need our protection. That’s because their immune systems may not be able to fend off water-borne disease from questionable supplies.

There are better places to get the drinking water we need than from sewage: Consider please, that 85% of California’s water is used by agriculture. About 5% of the State’s water is used domestically. And yet, residential consumers are required to do 100% of the conserving. It’s time that corporate agriculture assumed its share of responsibility. We might even get the legislature to offer them low-cost loans for improved irrigation systems. We should get Congress to revoke the drinking water provisions of this project. Jeopardizing our citizens’ health and our aquifers with an inferior quality of water is not the way to go.

—Ellen Stern Harris, Executive Director of The Fund For The Environment