By Jorge Casuso
March 25 -- More than a decade after Santa Monica’s water supply was discovered tainted by a dangerous gasoline additive, the City Council on Tuesday gave the go-ahead to begin demolishing parts of the old facility to pave the way for a new state of the art water treatment plant.
Under a settlement with the polluting oil companies, the City must complete the new facility by the end of next year or it must begin paying more than $3 million annually to continue purchasing water from the Metropolitan Water District.
The new plant – funded with some $250 million from two landmark settlements with the polluting oil companies in 2003 and 2006 – is expected to service as many as 90,000 permanent residents and nearly 300,000 daytime visitors.
To restore the City’s Charnock Well Field in nearby Mar Vista by December 31, 2010, the council on Tuesday voted to authorize a $4.6 million contract with Black and Veatch Construction, Inc. to purchase water treatment equipment and provide demolition services. That brings the revised contract to $8.9 million.
“To meet the project schedule, it is necessary to purchase long lead time equipment items and demolish unneeded facilities at the plant site… to prepare the site for future construction,” staff told the council.
Clearing the site will “allow the construction of new facilities to begin immediately upon execution of the amendment in order to expedite the project,” staff said.
Construction plans and specifications for the project – which will use filtration with granular-activated carbon to treat water from the three contaminated wells at the well field --. are approximately 50 percent complete, according to staff.
“The project also provides upgrades to the existing water treatment plant including construction of new systems for drinking water disinfection, softening and fluoridation,” according to staff.
According to the current project schedule, the City must purchase by next month Reverse Osmosis (RO) equipment that softens the drinking water and acts as an additional barrier for the removal of contaminates.
Santa Monica was forced to build the new facility after the gasoline additive MTBE, an oxygenate designed to make gas burn cleaner that is known as an animal carcinogen -- was detected in the City's Charnock Well Field in 1996.
The contamination affected five of the City’s 11 wells and led to the loss of much of Santa Monica’s drinking water. The City was forced to begin importing water from the Metropolitan Water District in 1996 at a cost of $3 million a year, which is paid for from proceeds of the final 2006 settlement with the oil companies.
Three of the oil giants -- Shell, Chevron and ExxonMobil, along with other smaller companies – reached the first settlement agreement of $121.5 million in 2003. Three years later, the City reached a second settlement with the companies for another $131 million.
Under the 2006 settlement, the City and took on the building of a new water treatment system.
The 2006 settlement released the oil companies from any further litigation, effectively cleared them of any continued legal obligation to build the system and required that they pay for replacement water until the plant is scheduled to go on line in 2010.
If not completed on budget, Santa Monica will be stuck with any additional costs.
Santa Monica’s share of the settlement was significantly reduced last March when the City
agreed to pay the largest legal bill in its history -- $55 million -- to attorneys who assisted in the lawsuits.
The settlement represented 22 percent of the $250 million the City received from the oil companies.
The City has its work cut out. Once released into the ground or water, MTBE “is difficult to contain or clean up,” according to a report by Environment California, a statewide, citizen-based environmental advocacy organization.
“First, it is not biodegradable, so it does not break down by itself. Second, and more importantly, it is highly water soluble and thus spreads quickly throughout an entire body of water,” the report titled “A Legacy of Pollution.”
For information on Major California legislation relating to MTBE visit
http://library.findlaw.com/1998/Jan/1/128412.html
