Senate Recommends appointments (Press Enterprise 08212006) PERCHLORATE: The three report to Capitol for Comfermation Hearing to explain Clean Up Issu

They need to do something, that stuff in the water causes all kinds of things like cancer, birth defects and the like it is a bad thing to have in something natural that we need to have and to drink. IN stead it makes our water the slow killer!!

BSRanch

Senate recommends appointments

PERCHLORATE: The three report to the Capitol for a confirmation hearing to explain a clean-up issue.

10:00 PM PDT on Monday, August 21, 2006

By JIM MILLER
Sacramento Bureau

SACRAMENTO - A state Senate panel recommended confirming three of Gov. Schwarzenegger's appointees to the Inland area's regional water board Monday, after the members promised to renew efforts to clean up a Rialto-area perchlorate plume.

Until earlier this month, the confirmations of Carole A. Beswick of Redlands, Deborah Neev of Laguna Beach, and Mary E. Cramer of Anaheim, to the Santa Ana Regional Water Quality Control Board were scheduled to be approved to four-year terms without discussion.

Cramer is a consultant to Norco Egg, an agriculture and egg business in Norco.

Monday, however, the three had to come to the Capitol to explain themselves to the Senate Rules Committee after state Sen. Nell Soto, D-Pomona, and Inland clean-water activists complained of inadequate efforts to clean up perchlorate and asked for a formal confirmation hearing.

"I would say you've made that commitment?" asked Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata, D-Oakland, following testimony about perchlorate problems in the Rialto area.

"That's fair to say," answered Beswick, the chairwoman of the water board.

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

The Inland plume extends for several miles and has contaminated about 20 drinking water wells in Rialto, Fontana and Colton.

The California Department of Health Services has tentatively set a perchlorate public health goal at 6 parts per billion.

But levels as high as 10,000 parts per billion have been found in groundwater below the suspected source -- an area of north Rialto where defense contractors and fireworks manufacturers used perchlorate.

Schwarzenegger appointed Beswick, Neev and Cramer in December.

Beswick, a former Redlands mayor, has served on the board since 2000.

Soto said Monday's hearing was never about blocking the three members' confirmation; the board already has three vacancies.

Instead, the senator said, she wanted a venue for the members to make public assurances that they take perchlorate contamination seriously. Monday's impending hearing led to community activists' first-ever meeting with Beswick last week, they said.

"I didn't think they should be appointed just carte blanche," Soto said.

"I heard a stronger commitment than I've heard in the past."

Reach Jim Miller at 916-445-9973 or jmiller@PE.com