Clean Water Advocate Sujatha Jahagardir worked with Rialto residents to demand recompension and clean-up from Goodrich Corporation and other companies responsible for contaminating the groundwater supply

Progress in drinking water pollution cleanup

As a result of industry carelessness, perchlorate—the major ingredient in rocket fuel—pollutes more than 400 drinking water sources across California. One of the communities hardest hit by the pollution is Rialto, a small working-class city located about an hour east of Los Angeles. The goal of the Clean Water Now! Campaign is to force polluters to clean up the mess they’ve made in Rialto and ensure that residents are not forced to drink rocket fuel in their water.

This October, after nearly 10 years of delay, staff of the Santa Ana Water Board proposed a strong cleanup order that takes the biggest step to date toward restoring clean water to the city of Rialto. The proposed order requires Goodrich Corporation, Black and Decker Inc. and fireworks company Pyro Spectaculars to:

• Stop the spread of perchlorate contamination throughout the region;

• Pay for full cleanup of all contamination within the aquifer; and

• Foot the bill for providing a safe supply of drinking water until cleanup is complete.

If adopted, the proposed order would also be the first order in the history of the California water boards to require that polluters reimburse taxpayers for all costs paid to date for stop-gap treatment measures.

The proposed order marks the culmination of more than a year of advocacy by Environment California and our partner organization, the Center for Community Action and Environmental Justice. Together we mobilized thousands of public comments to the board, recruited hundreds of residents to attend water board meetings, secured the support of state legislators and local decision-makers, released several research reports and garnered significant media visibility for the need for a strong cleanup order.

It is our hope that a final order adopted by the Santa Ana Water Board will serve as a model for strong action by other California Regional Water Boards to clean up perchlorate and other groundwater contaminants.

The next step in the campaign, which Environment California and CCAEJ will focus on in the coming months, will be to ensure that the proposed order is adopted by the Santa Ana Regional Water Board and fully enforced, and ultimately that polluters are held accountable for returning clean water to Rialto.