Witness Testimony
Mr. Ronald Gastelum
President and CEO
Metropolitan Water District of Southern California
700 North Alameda Street
Los Angeles, CA, 90012
Current Environmental Issues Affecting the Readiness of the Department of Defense
Subcommittee on Energy and Air Quality
Subcommittee on Environment and Hazardous Materials
April 21, 2004
10:00 AM
Good morning, my name is Ronald Gastelum, and I am the President and CEO of
the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California. MWD is a consortium of
26 cities and public water districts that provides drinking water to nearly 18
million people in Los Angeles, Orange, San Diego, Riverside, San Bernardino and
Ventura counties.
I am testifying today on behalf of the Association of Metropolitan Water
Agencies (AMWA), the American Water Works Association (AWWA), and the
Association of California Water Agencies (ACWA). AMWA is a nonprofit
organization serving the nation's largest publicly owned drinking water
agencies. AWWA is the world's largest and oldest scientific and educational
association representing over 58,000 drinking water supply professionals and
4,800 utilities that provide over 80 percent of the nation's drinking water.
ACWA is the largest coalition of public water agencies in the country,
representing the 447 public agencies, which deliver 90 percent of the water used
by cities, farms, and businesses in California.
We appreciate the opportunity to testify before this very important joint
hearing today. Perchlorate contamination is a national issue.
The full extent of the problem is not yet known, although it is clear that
perchlorate has been detected in the water supplies serving many millions of
people and farms throughout the country. It is also clear that there is a link
between the contamination in our water supplies and our country's past and
present military programs.
The Department of Defense is proposing language that modifies environmental
laws that would effectively exempt them from federal regulation of perchlorate
contamination on, and possibly near, what they have characterized as
"operational ranges." We are here to question the need and necessity
for such an exemption at this time.
We would not oppose an appropriately crafted proposal that accomplishes what
we hear the Department of Defense says it needs. That is, the authority to
continue to use munitions and other implements containing perchlorate and other
chemicals at specific facilities without violating the Resource Conservation and
Recovery Act (RCRA) or the Comprehensive Environment Response, Compensation, and
Liability Act (CERCLA).
The proposal by the Department of Defense (D.O.D.) would amend RCRA and
CERCLA to redefine the terms "solid waste" and "release."
These re-definitions would inhibit the ability of EPA, its state partners or
water systems to prevent contamination and the loss of drinking water sources.
We are concerned that amending these statutes in this way could endanger the
health of Americans, including soldiers and their families living on or near
military facilities.
The D.O.D. proposal would require human health and environmental affects to
occur beyond the boundaries of an operational range before action could be
taken. Acting only after the damage has been done could result in unnecessary
public health risks, unacceptable losses of water sources, and high costs to
clean up water supplies and/or secure alternative sources.
Worse, even in the event of contamination beyond the boundaries of a range,
the language would appear to deny accountability to clean up sources and prevent
further migration of contamination.
The problems associated with the D.O.D. proposal are compounded by language
enacted last year to redefine "operational range." The geographic
areas designated to be operational ranges, according to the word's new
definition, could be interpreted to be nearly limitless and include contractor
facilities. The term is overly broad and could provide too many opportunities
for D.O.D. to block EPA, its state partners or even water systems from requiring
action to protect a water source threatened with contamination from or on a
defense-related site.
D.O.D. officials have stated that the only goal of the re-definitions is to
avoid a situation in which the firing of weapons on ranges is considered a
"release" under RCRA or CERCLA. If this is the case, then we encourage
the Administration to narrow the scope of its initiative to reflect this
concern. We believe that our armed forces should be able to conduct weapons
training, yet still cleanup hazardous waste on its ranges that threaten sources
of drinking water both on and off military installations.
This may only be a definitional or drafting problem. However, based on the
limited information available to us to date, we think the problem is greater.
The current proposal is too broad. But the bigger issue is the proposal's
failure to respond to the basic public health threat presented by the
perchlorate that has already escaped into the country's water supplies.
We frankly do not believe we can meet our responsibility to the public if we
cannot identify with more certainty which facilities would be exempted, their
proximity to public water supplies, how the Department will assure that it will
contain existing and future perchlorate contamination at these facilities, and
when the perchlorate contamination in drinking and agricultural water supplies
will be remediated.
The concern of water providers is not based on speculation or vague theory.
The documented extent of perchlorate contamination in public water supplies is
extraordinary. For your convenience and review, I am enclosing, along with our
written comments, some maps that we hope will illustrate the extensive, almost
ice burg-like presence of perchlorate as a moving, persistent threat to Nation's
water resources: First I refer you to a map detailing drinking water resources
in California that have been curtailed by perchlorate. Our second map identifies
perchlorate releases as they are currently known throughout the United States.
Finally, we have enclosed a third map to highlight the location of perchlorate
manufacturers and users within the United States. These mapping details suggest
that we are only beginning to understand the magnitude of perchlorate as a
growing national challenge.
The entire lower Colorado River and groundwater basins in large portions of
Nevada, Arizona, and Southern California have been contaminated with perchlorate
clearly linked to past military programs. State and local public water suppliers
and local agricultural water districts have had to shut down wells and face the
prospect of having to find alternative supplies. Public water agencies are being
asked to pay for the costs of remediation for a problem we did not cause.
Perchlorate is a moving target; it has been released into the environment and
will likely continue to be released into the environment in locations throughout
the country on land used for important and sensitive military operations. If the
Defense Department is willing to develop and provide more information about
these sites, concerned water providers would be better equipped to evaluate the
threat of perchlorate migration in a cooperative and strategic manner. We are
really only beginning to understand the magnitude of this problem and the
potential impacts that we must work together at the federal, state and local
levels to address. Just as we need to monitor existing areas of contamination,
it is also imperative that we work cooperatively to develop strategies to
prevent future contamination sites.
What is the solution? We would offer the following:
1. If the Congress deems it necessary in providing for the national defense
to grant the Department an exemption, the exemption should be narrowly defined
to apply to specific essential facilities, and should be periodically reviewed
by the Congress.
2. The Department should be directed by a date certain to identify and
monitor contamination at affected facilities and report results to the EPA and
the public. This is necessary in order to detect contamination before it has
migrated beyond the boundaries, and into a source of water used for domestic,
municipal, or agricultural purposes. The location and extent of that migration
should also be identified and appropriately reported.
3. A new national strategy should be developed to fund the assessment and
remediation of perchlorate contamination wherever it exists in public water
supplies. Current law and financial strategy will invariably lead to protracted
litigation while the contamination spreads. This would not meet our collective
responsibility to the public or the environment.
We thank you for this opportunity to testify. We are committed to working
cooperatively with the Department of Defense and the Congress to both support
our national defense and protect the public's water supplies.
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