HIDDEN VALLEY LAKE >> A state court decision that blocks California’s top water agency from enforcing limits on chromium-6 in the Hidden Valley Lake (HVL) water supply is being celebrated by the community’s top water official.
The court victory was due, in part, to the active involvement in the lawsuit by this community’s water agency, the HVL Community Services District (CSD).
“We’ve stayed involved in this issue ever since I came here in 2016,” Kirk Cloyd, general manager of the CSD, said Thursday.
The court ruling applies to all water agencies in California.
It will save the CSD an estimated $3.4 million, Cloyd said. The CSD’s current year’s budget is about $1.4 million. The district has already spent about $63,000 on engineering plans and other costs associated with complying with the state’s old 10 parts per billion (ppb) limit.
“We would have had to go to our customers for a substantial water rate increase,” Cloyd said. “We’ve now avoided that.”
He also said that he was told by an attorney for the plaintiffs that a February 2017 letter the CSD sent to the state judge in support of the lawsuit was “instrumental” in the judge reaching his verdict.
“I’m very pleased with the decision,” Cloyd said.”It’s not about the MCL, its about the economic impact and the financial burden that the public can afford.”
Chromium-6, also called hexavalent chromium, is a known carcinogen made famous by law clerk Erin Brockovich after the dangerous metal was found in the drinking water supply of Hinkley and was blamed for a high rate of cancers among residents of the Mojave Desert town.
Earlier this year, in response to a lawsuit by the Solano County Taxpayers Association and the California Manufacturers & Technology Association against the state water agency, a Sacramento Superior Court judge threw out the state’s standard for chromium-6 in drinking water.
The court found that the state didn’t consider the cost for local water agencies to comply with the chromium-6 standards.
The California State Water Quality Control Board (SWCB) voted last month to accept the court’s decision rather than appeal it, a decision applauded by local water agencies in the state but criticized by environmental groups.
In a written statement, the state water board said it decided it would be better to adopt a new maximum contaminate level (MCL), that would take 18-24 months, than to fight the court order that could take years.
The HVL water district first became embroiled in the chromium-6 issue in 2015 when it suddenly found itself out of compliance with a state law.
The court, in its ruling, decided that economic interests take precedence over health issues when it comes to setting maximum allowable levels of the highly toxic heavy metal in California drinking water, especially in small- and medium-size water districts.
Some environmental advocates say the federal standard for chromium-6 is too high, according to the website Water Online. The EPA said it’s reviewing this claim.
The EPA currently regulates chromium-6 as part of the total chromium drinking water standard. New health effects information has become available since the original standard was set and the EPA is reviewing this information to determine whether there are new health risks that need to be addressed, according to the EPA website.
The court also ordered the state water board to adopt a new MCL for chromium-6, taking into consideration the potential economic hardships of water districts.
The court didn’t rule on or set its own MCL for chromium-6, instead concentrating solely on the economic impact of meeting strict MCL standards, especially for small water districts, including the Hidden Valley Lake CSD.
So by default, the pre-2014 state limit of 50 ppb again took effect as of today, (Sept. 30) making Hidden Valley Lake’s water system now in compliance with state regulations.
It will remain the California limit until the state water board adopts the new court-mandated MCL for chromium-6 in two years.
The federal limit on chromium-6 in drinking water is 100 ppb. The other 49 states have adopted the federal MCL.
In 2014, the state’s maximum level for chromium-6 was lowered from 50 ppb to 10 ppb, causing several water districts in the state to suddenly fall out of compliance. While larger water agencies generally were better able to address the problem, smaller agencies could not afford the high cost of coming into compliance, which can run from several hundred thousand dollars to upwards of $15 million.
Cloyd was manager of the Coachella Valley water district that had the largest number of water wells when the state lowered the MCL to 10 ppb. Suddenly, the district in Imperial County was out of compliance.
To get back into compliance, Cloyd and the Coachella water district installed ionic technology to remove chromium-6 from their drinking water by exchanging chromium ions with less harmful or non-harmful ions from another substance.
“Since then, I’ve stayed involved in the issue,” Cloyd said.
Area cities act
Hidden Valley Lake water users were not alone in dealing with the chromium-6 issue, specifically cause by the lowering of the state MCL. Two nearby communities — Willits and Vacaville — suddenly found themselves in violation of the updated state rules and grappled with the design challenges and high costs of fixing the problem.
The 10 ppb limit would have cost Vacaville, in Solano County, an estimated $7.5 million to meet the standard.
Recognizing this financial hardship, the state gave the smaller districts, including Hidden Valley Lake CSD, until Jan. 1, 2020 to come into compliance. Unfortunately, the state didn’t give them any money to fix the problem.
Still, the CSD had developed a remediation plan that was tentatively scheduled to be completed by Dec. 31, 2019. The estimated cost in 2015 was $750,00 to $1 million.
The CSD submitted its proposed plan to the water board for bringing its chromium-6 levels into compliance with state law. The plan included the following items:
•Conduct a feasibility study and treatment design, identify funding sources and land acquisition possibilities, conduct an environmental review, drill test wells, instal new wells, construct a new main extension line and clear well tank and apply for the required licenses/permits from county and state agencies.
•A full timeline was submitted with the compliance report.
•Since 2014, the water district has been “blending” water from its wells to reach the lowest MCL possible. Blending is a process in which water from several different sources, in this case wells, is mixed to obtain a chromium-6 level that meets state law.
For example, by blending water from its three wells on Dec. 31, 2015, the CSD, reduced the amount of chromium-6 from 18 ppb to 9.4 ppb, just under the old state limit.
Blending seemed to be the best and least costly option for Hidden Valley Lake. The other, more costly alternatives would have been to abandon the current water wells and drill new wells or remove the chromium-6 from the water through a distillation process called reverse osmosis.
To improve the blending results, a fourth well would be required that could be Hidden Valley Lake’s permanent solution to the chromium-6 problem. If blending hadn’t solved this problem, the water district would have needed to turn to a mechanical solution, such as a reverse osmosis filtration process, an expensive alternative.
Also, reverse osmosis — which basically makes distilled water — takes beneficial minerals out of the water, including iron, that would have had to be put back in at the water plant, adding to the costs.
The Yolo County town of Winters was headed towards the mechanical solution, a process that would have cost millions of dollars. Without help from the state or federal governments, the most likely way to pay for the improvements would have been through substantial water rate hikes — something that rarely goes over well with water customers.
The CSD has continued its water blending efforts and has an average chromium-6 level of 11.1 ppb, tantalizingly close to the pre-lawsuit MCL of 10 ppb.
History of action
The current events are a culmination of actions that were set in motion three years ago with a then-new state law that ordered chromium-6 levels in public drinking water could not exceed 10 parts per billion, which equals 0.01 milligrams per liter. A liter equals 2.1 gallons.
Before that, the state maximum contaminant level for chromium-6 was 50 ppb. The current federal MCL for the heavy metal is 100 ppb and was set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). All other states follow the federal MCL.
In 2015, Hidden Valley Lake was served by three water wells and all were tested for chromium-6 levels in December 2015. Well 2 had a chromium-6 level of 12 ppb, Well 3 showed 3.7 ppb, Well 4 had 20 ppb and the water at the water treatment plant tested at 18 ppb. There is no Well 1.
For perspective, the chromium-6 levels found in Hinkley in the 1990s were nearly 3,200 ppb.
In the Hinkley case, the contamination was caused by Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) dumping the contaminant into the groundwater system between 1952 and 1966. PG&E paid out more than $600 million in settlements regarding its illegal dumping and subsequent coverup attempt.
Hexavalent chromium is different than trivalent chromium (chromium-3), which is a dietary supplement and required nutrient for humans that has extremely low toxicity and is not known to cause cancer, as does chromium-6.
Chromium-3 is found in many vegetables, fruits, meats, grains, and yeast. Chromium-6 occurs naturally in the environment from the erosion of natural chromium deposits. It can also be produced by industrial processes.
Serpentine problem
In Hidden Valley Lake’s case, the problem is due to high amounts of the mineral serpentine that is found near the water wells.
Serpentine — the state’s official rock — is a natural source of chromium-6. It is found throughout Lake County.
Regarding the safety of drinking water containing chromium-6, the water board stated in 2015 that a drinking water sample with a detection of chromium-6 above the Public Health Guideline (PHG) of 0.02 ppb does not necessarily represent a public health concern.
The PHG is based on a cancer risk of no more than one case of cancer per one million people who drink two liters of water with hexavalent chromium at the PHG every day for 70 years. The PHG represents the level of hexavalent chromium at which no adverse health effects would be anticipated over an entire lifetime of exposure.
The PHG tries to account for persons at three different stages in their lives by including protection factors to account for age and by applying higher rates of water consumption in their calculation.
It represents the level of chromium-6 at which no adverse health effects would be anticipated over an entire lifetime of exposure to the most sensitive population.
So, a Public Health Guideline is not a boundary line between a “safe” and “dangerous” level of a chemical, and drinking water is frequently demonstrated as safe to drink even if it contains chemicals at levels exceeding their PHGs, according to the state water board.
In a statement on its Website, the EPA stated that the MCL for total chromium was established in 1991 and was based on the best available science at the time which indicated that continued exposure to chromium-6 could result in allergic dermatitis (skin reactions).
When it lowered the MCL from 50 ppb to 10 ppb, the state, like the federal government, cited concern for public safety and the most then-current health information available concerning chromium-6.
The federal 1996 Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) amendments require that once every five years EPA issue a new list of no more than 30 unregulated contaminants to be monitored by public water systems.
In addition to chromium-6, other toxic heavy metals on the EPA’s “to monitor” list are vanadium, molybdenum, cobalt and strontium.
A safe level?
So, at what level does chromium-6 start causing health problems? That’s difficult to answer — despite public health guidelines — because there are relatively few scientific studies on the issue and even fewer studies in humans.
In 1965, a study of 155 humans exposed to drinking water with concentrations of approximately 20 mg/L of chromium-6 was conducted in China.
The human test subjects were observed to have mouth sores, diarrhea, stomachache, indigestion, vomiting, elevated white blood cell counts, and a higher per capita rate of cancers, including lung and stomach cancers.
The study suggests that gastrointestinal effects may occur in humans following exposures to hexavalent chromium at levels of 20 parts per million (ppm) in drinking water. Keep in mind, the study found health problems at 20 parts per million while the state and federal MCL is in parts per billion.
There are several reports in medical literature of possible fetal damage caused by chromium compounds, according to the EPA.
Also, high doses (250-1,000 ppm) of orally administered chromium-6 have been reported to cause developmental toxicity in mice, according to a 1989 study. Additional effects included increased abnormalities in the tail and wrist forelimbs, and patches of bleeding under the skin in the offspring.
The Brockovich case in Hinkley showed that 3,200 ppb is unsafe for humans. But the science to date doesn’t appear to offer a dividing line at which chromium-6 goes from a safe to unsafe level. In ppb, is it 2,500, 250 or 25? Available scientific date is sketchy, at best.
Until there is definitive scientific evidence that suggests what that dividing line is, the federal government and 49 states are sticking with 100 ppb.
When the California water board does set its new Maximum Contaminant Level for chromium-6 in drinking water, probably by the end of 2019, many environmentalists and others involved in water issues expect it will remain the leader in regulating chromium-6.
Some expect the new MCL to stay at the current 50 ppb while others see it going lower.
Cloyd said he has a “gut feeling” the state will set the new MCL for chromium-6 at 20-30 ppb while also addressing the economic impacts, as ordered by the court.
“I don’t think the state will go back to 10 ppb,” he added. “I prefer to have no detection eventually.”
