Hearing Set to Find Perchlorate Blame (Press Enterprize 022307)

Hearing set to find perchlorate blame


10:00 PM PST on Friday, February 23, 2007

By JENNIFER BOWLES
The Press-Enterprise

A long-awaited hearing to determine blame for the Inland region's most significant water-pollution case will be held in Rialto starting March 28, officials said Friday.

The hearing could result in the cleanup of a several-miles-long underground plume of perchlorate, long in the making. The rocket fuel ingredient has tainted more than a dozen drinking-water wells in Rialto and Colton.

Regional water-quality investigators based in Riverside believe much of the contamination comes from two companies that operated at an industrial site in northern Rialto in the 1950s and '60s. Attorneys for those companies, Goodrich Corp. and Emhart, which is a subsidiary of Black and Decker, have denied that.

William L. Rukeyser, a spokesman for the State Water Resources Control Board in Sacramento, said the hearing will be held over five days -- March 28-30 and April 4-5 -- in an auditorium at the San Bernardino County Department of Behavioral Health, 850 E. Foothill Blvd., Rialto.

The state board's chairwoman, Tam Doduc, will serve as the hearing officer and make a recommendation to the full board for a final decision. A civil engineer, Doduc was appointed to the board by Gov. Schwarzenegger.

She has served as deputy secretary at the California Environmental Protection Agency, where she directed the agency's environmental justice and external scientific peer review activities.

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



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BS Ranch Perspective:

Here we go, the results will be in, and I really cannot see that they will pawn the whole thing off on the County whether the City was not Incorperated at the time or not, that was over a 100 years ago, and should not take into effect due to the time that it was done. It was all such a different California then and well, the Rialto thta we know nad love Really didn't go about Baseline until after the Late 70's, it might just be taken into chance that it will be passed on to the county in that respect.

However, here is my thoughts on that matter. Passing the blame or responciblity to the County is not going to do anything but have the cost that the city might have to pay on or above the call of duty to the clean up to chare them for it. The County on the other hand will drag their feet on payments and they will also do everything that they can to not participate in so much as to help to clean as much as they have to, or have to be forced to by the court. You cannot force the whole county to prison or jail for this misconduct or non payment or even the non clean up when an clear effort has been made. Rialto might be shooting themselves in the foot here. However who knows I have been known to be wrong.

BS Ranch

PS I hope I am wrong in this case as well..