Lawsuit: Pollutants slipped into county’s water supply

The Orange County Water District is suing industrial companies throughout the county for allegedly polluting the water supply, including one company in Costa Mesa and several in Santa Ana.

By contaminating the groundwater basin with volatile organic chemicals and perchlorate, the companies are “posing a serious and substantial threat to the public health and environment,” the lawsuit reads. The district seeks to fine the companies the money it would cost to investigate claims of contamination and clean up wherever necessary.

Efforts to reach a representative of Troy Group Inc., which is accused in the lawsuit of emitting dangerous chemicals while manufacturing printers in Costa Mesa, were unsuccessful.

Companies named in the lawsuit “failed to prevent spills and leaks” of chemicals and didn’t warn people who might be affected or take action to clean up the spills in a reasonable amount of time, the lawsuit alleges.

District officials said the water supply in the county, which draws about 75% of its water from the county’s groundwater basin, is safe to drink.

“[The pollution] is in the shallow area,” said Eleanor Torres, a district spokeswoman. “It’s not in the part of the basin where our drinking water comes from, so we’re being proactive and making sure that it doesn’t come near that source.”

The impact the contamination could have on drinking water in the future is hard to assess without doing more studies, according to hydrogeologist David Bolin, with the water district, but the chemicals the plants are accused of putting into the environment are known to cause cancer. The carcinogenic compounds have since been replaced by less harmful chemicals in the plants’ processes.

“In many cases the companies weren’t doing anything wrong given the standards at the time,” Bolin said. “It was just their standard procedures that resulted in some leaks.”

— Alan Blank