TRICKLES OF HOPE
Polluters attempt to water down state and federal standards for perchlorate contamination
By Michael Collins
Pasadena Weekly – February 12, 2004
Under the shadow of a $2 million claim for damages filed by the city of Pasadena in January over the cost of lost water resources due to the perchlorate contamination of a number of municipal water wells, federal officials two weeks ago unveiled an ambitious program to rid local water sources of the toxic rocket fuel oxidizer that was first conceived decades ago at Jet Propulsion Laboratory and used ever since to propel America into space.
“NASA [which owns JPL] will make this right because we know we have a problem,” said Steve Slaten, JPL’s remedial project manager.
But while optimistic about NASA’s assumption of responsibility for the toxic messes made in the foothills above Pasadena, Slaten acknowledged nothing is going to happen overnight.
“It will take years, maybe decades, and will add up to tens of millions of dollars before we are through,” Slaten said.
More than 330 drinking water sources in California have registered concentrations of perchlorate at or above the state’s provisional action reporting level of 4 parts per billion (ppb). Wells registering in at 18 ppb or above are taken out of service for human consumption, and Pasadena has shut down nine of its drinking wells due to perchlorate contamination emanating from JPL.
In addition to its perchlorate cleanup program, the 176-acre space lab near the La Canada-Flintridge border with Pasadena is also in the midst of a $114 million EPA-mandated Superfund cleanup that is presently being carried out by NASA.
As Slaten said, the dual cleanups will be a long time in finishing. But making that wait even longer is both the state and federal government’s failure to set an formal, acceptable level of perchlorate exposure to humans, with the powerful industries that use perchlorate — Lockheed Martin, Aerojet (GenCorp Inc.), Kerr-McGee Chemical and American Pacific Corp. — all aggressively lobbying to have set that standard as low as possible.
For an idea of how widely perchlorate is used today, a single rocket booster for the space shuttle contains over 1.3 million pounds of propellant, of which 70 percent is ammonium perchlorate. Potassium perchlorate is also a primary ingredient of safety flares, matches, munitions, explosives, fireworks and airbag detonators.
But while perchlorate has propelled America toward the heavens, and remains a must for Fourth of July festivities, the volatile chemical compound has polluted groundwater and presents a threat to human health throughout California and around the nation.
Aerospace industry advocates and lobbyists downplay the effects of perchlorate on humans, but US Environmental Protection Agency documents make it clear that “Perchlorate disrupts how the thyroid functions,” thereby putting at risk unborn children.
“Impairment of the thyroid function in expectant mothers may impact the fetus and newborn and result in effects including changes in behavior, delayed development and decreased learning capability,” according to the agency.
The problem, at least for people exposed to any level of perchlorate contamination, is there are no state or federal drinking water standards to gauge exactly the level of potential damage being done.
A provisional action level for reporting to consumers’ perchlorate-tainted water was established by the California Department of Health Services in 1997 and is now 4 ppb.
Legislation passed by in 2002 charged the Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment, OEHHA, with setting a public health goal for perchlorate by Jan. 1, 2003. Then the state Department of Health Services was to come up with a maximum contaminant level by the first of this year.
But neither deadline was met, due mainly to industry litigation.
OEHHA now has until March 14 to publish the final public health goal for exposure to perchlorate. But the polluters have other plans.
Soon after Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger took office, a chorus of industry criticism was rained upon the state EPA.
“There appears to be a rush to judgment to adopt an extremely conservative drinking water standard for perchlorate based on highly questionable science,” said the California Manufacturers and Technology Association in an Oct. 23 posting on its Web site.
“Establishing a permanent drinking water standard of 4 ppb for perchlorate could precipitate a water supply crisis and would have significant adverse economic impacts for California’s agricultural industry, water consumers, the building industry and others, with correspondent job losses.”
