No Exemptions for Safe Water, Official Urges

The chairman of the state board responsible for protecting California’s drinking water called Thursday for extending Proposition 65 water quality standards to government agencies and small businesses, two groups specifically exempted under the anti-toxics initiative approved by voters last November.

At a meeting of the state Water Resources Control Board, the panel’s chairman, W. Don Maughan, repeatedly asserted that the expected tough new anti-pollution standards should apply “across the board,” not just to businesses with 10 or more employees, as called for in the ballot measure.

The board has the authority to set water quality standards and extend them to any group it deems necessary.

If implemented, Maughan’s proposal would have a powerful effect on local government agencies, especially those operating sewage treatment plants that spew low levels of toxic chemicals into drinking water sources or those that spread pesticides and fertilizers on golf courses, parks and roadsides.

“When the people speak as (they did) in Proposition 65 . . . I think we have to address it,” Maughan said.

Maughan still needs the support of a majority of his five-member board, but no dissent was raised by any of his colleagues at Thursday’s meeting. In addition, the proposal has broad support among the water agency’s top executives.

In an interview after the board’s discussion of the issue, Maughan said that a final determination of how to handle Proposition 65 could take several months. However, he made it clear that he will push to apply the same water standards to all those who discharge pollutants into drinking water supplies, whether large corporation, small business, or government agency.

“It’s a matter of public health protection,” he said.

Broad Powers

Even without Proposition 65, the state water board has broad powers to protect the state’s drinking water supplies under the two-decade-old Porter-Cologne Act. Working through nine regional boards, the parent panel sets standards for the discharge of water-borne pollutants into the environment.

Maughan said that he would like to see his board enforce Proposition 65 using its Porter-Cologne authority. That also could mean stiffer fines for polluters than provided under the November ballot initiative and could also include criminal penalties, although Maughan minimized the significance of the differences in penalties.

Even before passage of Proposition 65, the state and regional water boards enforced safe drinking water standards. However, state regulators had standards in place for only a relatively few chemicals. And in setting permitted levels of pollutants, the authorities took economic considerations into account, weighing the cost of removing low levels of toxic chemicals against the expected health benefits.

But that kind of balancing of interests is not permitted under Proposition 65.

The ballot measure requires the governor to publish a list of chemicals known to cause cancer or reproductive effects, including birth defects, miscarriages and infertility. As of July 1, Gov. George Deukmejian had listed 60 different chemicals--including 37 that cause cancer, seven that cause birth defects, and three that cause both cancer and birth defects. Among the listed chemicals are such commonplace substances as arsenic compounds, asbestos, chromium compounds and vinyl chloride.

Expected to Grow

And the list is expected to grow rapidly over the next year as a Deukmejian-appointed scientific panel adds new substances from a list of about 200 candidate chemicals.

Twenty months after a chemical is listed, businesses with 10 or more employees are barred from discharging any of the listed chemicals into drinking water supplies unless they are prepared to show that the amounts present no significant risk to consumers. Violators can be fined up to $2,500 a day and are subject to suits that can be filed by anyone objecting to the pollution.

The Deukmejian Administration, in an effort that should help businesses avoid such citizen suits, is gearing up to determine safe discharge levels for many of the most commonly used chemicals on the governor’s list. Health and Welfare Agency Undersecretary Thomas E. Warriner told the water board that health officials hope to set safe use levels for up to 40 chemicals in the next year.

Once those levels are written into regulations, Maughan would like to apply them to the state and regional water boards’ own system, which regulates government agencies as well as businesses.

There is “no logic” for excluding small businesses and government agencies from the Proposition 65 standards, argued Harry M. Schueller, the water board’s deputy director. “If arsenic kills you, it kills you just the same if it is from an industry that has less than 10 employees, one with more than 10, or a municipality,” he said in an interview after the board’s meeting.

At the meeting, representatives of industry and government urged the board to be careful in applying Proposition 65 requirements to its existing system of permits and regulations.

Incredulous Member

But when a lawyer for a waste disposal company recommended a delay of six months before making any decisions, board member Danny Walsh replied, “You want us to wait six months? What would the reaction of various environmental groups and citizens groups be?”

During the fall election campaign, opponents of Proposition 65 attacked the initiative in a series of television ads and billboards that complained that the measure was “full of exemptions” for government.

One commercial that was repeatedly broadcast showed the publicly owned Rancho Seco nuclear power plant near Sacramento and pointed out that neighboring farmers would be subjected to restrictions that would not apply to the government-operated plant.

Another television ad pointed out that the discharge ban would not apply to some of the state’s worst polluters, including Los Angeles’ troubled Hyperion waste-water treatment facility, which has been fined repeatedly for dumping raw sewage into Santa Monica Bay.

However, Maughan said Thursday that he would oppose applying the Proposition 65 standards to dumping of pollutants into non-drinking water sources, such as the ocean or bays.

After voters overwhelmingly approved Proposition 65, Sen. Quentin L. Kopp (I-San Francisco) introduced a bill to apply many of the initiative’s requirements to government agencies. But his measure has been stalled in a Senate committee and is unlikely to be considered until next year, according to a Kopp aide.