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12/17/2007: "Ground Water Contamination In SJC"

By Steve Ludwig

The Community Development and Planning Dept (CDPD) recently presented their proposal for "protecting groundwater" as required by State law. In SJC groundwater contamination is, by all accounts, widespread and is caused mostly by residential drainfields.

Drainfields do a good job of preventing bacteria and solids from reaching groundwater, but can’t stop chemicals from eventually reaching aquifers.

This is a problem everywhere people get water from wells and dispose of their waste in drainfields. Of greatest concern are the thousands of toxins produced by the unfettered chemical industry. These carcinogens, mutagens and endocrine disrupters are in our food, air and most products, and as a result, in our drainfields.

The widespread use of chlorine for drinking water "disinfection" and cleaning creates a long list of "persistent organic pollutants" or POPs for short. Pharmaceuticals and estrogens also find their way into aquifers from urine. Some people routinely dump unwanted toxins into drainfields to "get rid of them."

The ordinances to protect aquifers are still being written, but so far the proposals are looking pretty half-hearted. There is no dispute that drainfields are the major source of contamination in SJC yet the CDPD strategy does not restrict their proliferation. This can only result in a worsening of the situation. Washington State law prohibits local governments from allowing aquifers to degrade, yet this is just what CDPD is proposing.

Worse yet, CDPD and Health Department staffers clearly stated that SJC has not allocated any funds to test for the abovementioned poisons. Unless residents act, we will never know how safe, or dangerous, our drinking water is. CDPD only proposes minimal testing for nitrate. Nitrate is an indicator of contamination, but not a very good one.

This appears to be a cheap way of seeming to be doing something since nitrate is easy to detect and water systems already are required to test for them. All we really know is that there has been an alarming increase in nitrate in the last few years.

It’s sad that a county with a 53 million dollar budget can’t provide the funds to minimally protect public health or to comply with the State laws intended for that purpose. One of the foundations of common law, going back hundreds of years and still argued in courts today is the Public Trust Doctrine; it states that the primary duty of government is to protect the things we hold in common and are needed for life to continue; water, air, the natural ecology etc. The County Council’s 2008 Legislative Priorities doesn’t even mention our groundwater crisis.

We have been through this before. The failures to comply with the letter, much less, the intent of laws protecting public health are costing SJC taxpayers millions in lost grant funds, legal fees and extra staff in the PA’s office and CDPD.

The effort to write a new CAO ordinance, of which groundwater protection is a part, is going down the same path toward another finding of "noncompliance."