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Brochure No. 1

The community has a fundamental legal right to clean water for drinking, cooking and bathing. The integrity of these uses have priority over any other uses and cannot be challenged by special interests or political expediencies.

These rights are guaranteed by the California State Constitution’s Health and Welfare clause, the Clean Water Act, which requires health based standards; the Clean Water Bond Act, which is the mechanism provided to clean up contaminated water to the level of health based standards established by the State Office of Health Hazard Assessment; and the California Environmental Quality Act that screens development according to these standards. The proposed EIR, issued by the DWP for reclaimed water use, does not even acknowledge these standards. The standard proposed by the DWP, the Maximum Contaminant Level, is based on ten year old technology and cost that was intended to apply to a clean water source... not wastewater.

The "toilet to tap" reclaimed water project, intended for potable water use, should be considered only as a last resort, according to the National Research Council. Large-scale experiments on people, such as has been taking place in the Montebello area for many years, indicates an unprecedented level of bureaucratic hubris. The effort to widen the experiment to include San Fernando Valley and environs should not be tolerated.

Nobody really knows what agents of infection or hazardous chemicals will be injected into the aquifer. The EIR does not deny this. It fails to consider, for example, that the chlorine treatment meant to disinfect the waste water will convert chromium 3, which is harmless, into Chromium 6, one of the most dangerous chemicals and will result in a buildup of this deadly toxin in the underground water supply – the direct result of injecting treated wastewater into the aquifer. Chromium 6 has been judged a carcinogen by the Office of Health Hazard Assessment because it is bio-accumulative. That means that it does not leave the body, but accumulates in organs like the liver, kidneys and spleen, over long periods of time, causing cancers and unknown effects on the outcomes of pregnancies. There is no safe level. The danger depends on how much water people drink, how much they cook, and how much they bathe.

What can happen if the DWP is wrong? Can the damage be repaired? Are they setting us up for a public health catastrophe? What are the odds? The EIR lacks an environmental risk assessment. How does the DWP know that there is no risk?

Experimenting on human populations is still contrary to the ways in which we do things in this society.