A tiring year of contamination

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California
THE PINNACLE
A tiring year of contamination
Polluted South Valley wells inspire perchlorate awareness, drastic
lifestyle changes
By Sarah Ruby
Week of December 25, 2003

Longtime San Martin residents Steve and Liz Lueddeke were just getting
reacquainted with having an infant in the house when they heard the news
last January: the aquifer from which their well draws water is
contaminated with perchlorate.

It was a word they had never heard. A rocket fuel propellant polluting
their household drinking water.

As they read about the contaminant left upstream in Morgan Hill by the
Olin Corp., a flare manufacturer, their concern shifted from their
grandson's diapers and nap schedule to something decidedly more serious.
His thyroid.

Children, they quickly learned from the little literature available, are
most susceptible to perchlorate's potential ill-effects, such as brain
and developmental delays. While nobody knows what a "safe" level is,
even a small amount can affect children.

No way would they expose little Jalen, their first and only grandchild.

They signed up for bottled water from the Santa Clara County Water
District and use it for everything from brewing coffee to washing
Jalen's clothes.

Lugging 30-pound bottles of water that once came effortlessly from the
tap has worn down the Lueddekes over the past year. They want to move
away from the pollution, but the couple's local bank denied their
refinance application. They can't move to the Sierras like they had
planned, and they face the daily inconvenience of raising an infant
child who's every water need, even his bath, comes from a bottle.

"I wouldn't like to continue living like this," said Liz wearily. "It's
just getting harder."

Such is life at ground zero in the nation's debate over "acceptable"
levels of the explosives byproduct being found increasingly in U.S.
drinking water, most left by U.S. defense contractors. Since 2001, when
California water systems were required to test for perchlorate, everyone
from local residents to government agencies has been looking for
answers.

There are studies, conferences, debates in Congress and reports of
intervention from the Bush administration in the debate over how much
perchlorate is acceptable, and "none" isn't part of the equation. The
studies have taken on a new sense of urgency since perchlorate was found
in winter lettuce grown in the Colorado River basin and in milk in
Texas, though local tests did not detect it in fruit crops such as
tomatoes.

The EPA's 2002 draft health risk assessment says that 1 part per billion
in water is safe ? not factoring in potential additional exposure
through lettuce, milk and other food products. The Llueddeke's water is
10 ppb. The EPA, however, faces mounting pressure from the defense
industry, the nation's largest perchlorate polluter, to endorse a
standard no less than 200 ppb. To clean up the Colorado River and dozens
of wells in the L.A. basin would break them.

All of which has done little to comfort the Lueddekes and the more than
400 other South Valley homeowners who once prided themselves on having
good California well water.

"From the very beginning it was extremely frightening, especially when
we found it could damage our children's health," said Sylvia Hamilton,
chair of the Perchlorate Community Advisory Group and the unofficial
mayor of San Martin. "It was frightening and it still is."

Frightening because Olin began making flares and dumping the byproduct
in 1956, which makes a handful of humans question their own thyroid
problems.

This article can be viewed at:
http://www.pinnaclenews.com/archives/2003-december-25/sb2.php

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