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Added 10/17/96 01:58:37 AM
Wendy Phillips Regional Water QualityDear Ms. Philips,
We are enclosing what we believe are the few feasible mitigations for the nitrate problem in Agua Dulce and submitting it for your review and use.
We recommend that mitigation of the nitrate problem be broken into four major components:
1. Immediately establish well testing of a significant number of wells to understand the magnitude and the variance of the problem over seasons. We have a method to keep people from altering the samples.
2. The clean-up of the existing plumes that have been located, which have their source from the Pratty pig farm animal waste dump This pollutes a significant amount of the Agua Dulce blueline Stream.
3. The voluntary removal of animal wastes by having them trucked off to reduce nitrate loading.
4. Most importantly, is the mandatory enforcement by LA County of current laws regulating sewage disposal in the community. We believe that the County is exaggerating the problem by allowing septic leach line installation in "historic high water areas" of the aquifer, illegal septic of rental trailers, and by allowing multiple dwelling properties such as trailer parks to discharge sewage without a waste permit.
Regional Water Quality can help by enforcing the rules now on the books requiring waste discharge permits for the trailer parks and other commercial facilities.
I believe that if we do establish well testing it can eliminate the need for specially drilled wells which are the costly aspect of waste discharge permits. Possibly those people who would have to put in monitoring wells could pay for the costs of well tests around their property.
We believe this information could be provided to the
community, possibly over the Internet. We know that Lillian Smith
and her paper will publish none of it and will probably actively
oppose any of these things with her misinformation pieces that
you have just seen.
If I can be of any other service to you, please call.
Charles Brink
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