Pollution In Rialto Wells Rises SB Sun 080206) Perchliorate Contamination in local groundwater has spiked, in Study released today...

Remember to Start to Dring Bottled Water in Rialto! I guess it is time that we should be & Should have been concerned about what we have been drinking out of our tap! The well more then likely has been giving us this kind of water for years and is just now deleivering us the amounds that we can read. I speculate that it could have raised and Lowerd through out the history of that well, meaning that every time tey tested it they got either safe level's of the toxant, or they showed a rise however they didn't want to share this with the public as to not cause a panic, or force the drinking water to be drank from other sorces such as stores or Deliveries like Sparklets or Arrowhead.

It is becoming more and more evident that these sorces of water are teh way to go for a sorce of drinking water in the Inland Empire or at least Rialto and as Rialto is concered. If they are unable to clean this well ten the implications can be very costly to the city!!

BS Ranch

Article Launched: 8/02/2006 12:00 AM

Pollution in Rialto wells rises
Robert Rogers, Staff Writer
San Bernardino County Sun

RIALTO - Perchlorate contamination in local groundwater has spiked, claims a study released today.

The paper, issued by the Environment California Research and Policy Center of Los Angeles, also criticizes the corporations it says are responsible for the pollution for failing to act sooner.

Perchlorate, an ingredient in rocket fuels, was first discovered in Rialto's groundwater in 1997.

Using test data reported by Goodrich Corp., which operated a facility in Rialto in the 1950s and 1960s that is thought to be a source of perchlorate contamination, the paper's authors conclude some wells are now measuring water 200 times more contaminated than last year.

"The evidence suggests the perchlorate contamination problem in Rialto is not getting better, it's getting worse," said the report's lead author, Sujatha Jahagirdar.

"It also shows very clearly the negligence and recalcitrance of the corporations responsible for polluting the area," he said.

The report hypothesizes that heavy rains last winter raised the water table and that the water splashed previously dry, perchlorate-laced soils and created a new "pulse" of contamination.

The report said that the new pollution pulse threatens several wells around PW-2, the well from which the data was gathered.

But the report, dubbed the "White Paper," is only one element of a renewed vigor surrounding the issue of perchlorate contamination, responsibility and cleanup, all of which remain far from resolved.

The City Council on Tuesday took symbolic action, approving a three-pronged resolution calling on the Santa Ana Regional Water Quality Control Board to issue cleanup orders to Goodrich Corp., Emhart Corp. and other perchlorate dumpers and calling on the county Board of Supervisors to join the city in its efforts to effect cleanup.

The council also authorized $22,000 for the distribution of "Blast From the Past," a perchlorate-education DVD produced by Cal State San Bernardino, to each of Rialto's 32,000 households.

"The longer nothing is done, the longer it will take to solve this problem," City Attorney Robert Owen said. "This is such a huge problem, we can't afford to not keep up public awareness."

Davin Diaz of the Center of Community Action and Environmental Justice in San Bernardino said he, along with other environmentalist groups, had prodded the city to seek a symbolic resolution.

"It is an outrage that so little has happened to address this problem since 1997," Diaz said. "The county and the city should be working together to pressure these multibillion-dollar corporations who have the ability and responsibility to pay."

Estimates of the total cleanup cost on the plume of perchlorate contamination stretching beneath Rialto and Colton have ranged up to $200 million.