Saturday, August 12, 2006

Water - Quality Board Under Fire (Press Enterprise 081212006) Rialto DO NOT DRINK TAP WATER

The County of San Bernardino needs to wake up and smell the coffee, and or Java.. The Water Quality Board needs to take this Incident and look at it and move on it swiftly. It is true if it goes by way of the courts it will hold everything up and the longer this is held up the more that people in Rialto are effected by the contaminated water. PERCHLORATE can cause many different types of cancer, many of which are guarded by the Thyroid Gland and that is one glad that is highly effected by it. So Rialto, West Valley Water District or whom ever the pumps might be that are effected they need to notify those people directly not by these news paper clippings alone and figure that they are notified, because we are not notified. By Directly Notified they need to pay someone to go door to door, and contact and make sure that everyone gets a warning not to consume the water. I don't even think that you can boil this out of the water!! So if you drink enough of it you are toast!!

Take my word For it Don't DRINK THE WATER IN RIALTO, ESPECIALLY IF YOU ARE SUPPLIED BY WEST VALLEY WATER DISTRICT ...OR....THE CITY OF RIALTO.....UNTIL WE ARE NOTIFIED DIRECTLY WHICH & WHOM ARE EFFECTED!!!

BSRanch



Water-quality board under fire

PERCHLORATE: Three appointees will face a state panel as criticism arises over area cleanup efforts.
10:00 PM PDT on Friday, August 11, 2006
By JENNIFER BOWLES
The Press-Enterprise

Three regional water-quality board members appointed by Gov. Schwarzenegger will undergo further scrutiny after a state senator complained the board has done little to clean up perchlorate contamination in a key Inland drinking water source.

The three members will take the rare step of going to Sacramento on Aug. 21 to answer questions posed by the Senate Rules Committee, in addition to the standard process -- handing in written responses and speaking to committee members over the telephone, Nettie Sabelhaus, the committee's appointments director, said Friday.

The Senate Rules Committee reviews gubernatorial appointments that require Senate confirmation, and then issues its recommendations to the full Senate.

The appointments, announced by Gov. Schwarzenegger in December, were Mary Cramer, of Anaheim, and Deborah Neev, of Laguna Beach, who already have been serving on the Santa Ana Regional Water Quality Control Board.

Carole Beswick, a former Redlands mayor, was reappointed. She has served on the board since 2000 and is currently its chair. Based in Riverside, the water board regulates pollution in the Santa Ana watershed that sits in parts of San Bernardino, Riverside and Orange counties.

Sen. Nell Soto, D-Pomona, requested the in-person meetings, saying in her letter to committee chairman, Sen. Don Perata, D-Oakland, that the board has "performed dismally" regarding the contamination of perchlorate, a rocket-fuel ingredient, in the San Bernardino Valley.

Beswick has responded to community complaints at board meetings by saying that the perchlorate contamination is the board's top priority.

The underground plume stretches several miles, and has invaded some 20 drinking water wells in Rialto, Fontana and Colton. Levels reaching as high as 10,000 parts per billion have been discovered in groundwater below the suspected source -- an industrial site in north Rialto where fireworks and defense contractors used perchlorate.

California's Department of Health Services has set a public health goal at 6 parts per billion as it decides how much of the chemical should be allowed in the state's drinking supplies.

In sufficient amounts, perchlorate can interfere with the thyroid gland's ability to make hormones that control metabolism and guide neurological development in growing bodies.

The water board's staff, in a letter to the rules committee, said that one of two companies alleged to have caused much of the pollution continues to fight their efforts to get a cleanup under way.

A two-day hearing had been scheduled for mid-July to prove that Emhart Industries Inc., is tied to a company that existed at the site in 1950s. That company made explosive cartridges, photoflash cartridges, flares and other incendiary devices containing perchlorate.

Officials at Emhart, a subsidiary of Black & Decker, have been "using all means possible" to block hearings attempting to hold them accountable, the letter said.

Reach Jennifer Bowles at (951) 368-9548 or jbowles@PE.com

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