Inland California Water Managers Set to Monitor for Pharmaceuticals
By Jennifer Bowles, The Press-Enterprise, Riverside, Calif.
Mar. 10–Inland water agencies plan to develop a task force and program to monitor pharmaceuticals in local water supplies where federal scientists have already found trace amounts of caffeine, pain relievers and other pharmaceuticals.
An awareness of drugs in drinking-water supplies is so new that Inland agencies will look first to a study just getting under way by the Metropolitan Water District. Officials at the district, which serves 18 million Southern Californians, want to see to what extent, if any, pharmaceuticals are lurking in the agency’s Inland-area reservoirs and in their imported water supplies, which are stored in some Inland aquifers.
“It’s of interest and concern to the water industry so Metropolitan said rather than sit and wait around, let’s see what we can learn about it,” said Mic Stewart, Metropolitan’s water quality manager, of a monitoring program. “This is the most preliminary step you can take.”
An investigation by The Associated Press found traces of pharmaceuticals in the watersheds and treated drinking-water supplies in two dozen metropolitan areas across the country, including Riverside County and Southern California.
Stewart said the issue is emerging now because some labs are just now able to measure the pharmaceuticals at such low levels. But, he said, many questions remain. Scientists are studying the issue, and it is not yet clear what, if any, negative effects the pharmaceuticals have on people.
“There’s no definitive data that allows anyone to draw conclusions on human health effects,” Berchtold said.
Scientists from the U.S. Geological Survey briefed Inland water officials in October of their ongoing study of the Santa Ana watershed.
They sampled 99 wells over a vast area from Chino to Hemet to Corona and San Timoteo Canyon and found pesticides, industrial solvents, caffeine and pain relievers such as acetaminophen in some. The study has not been finalized, USGS officials said Friday.
The samples were tested directly from wells before the water was treated and piped to the public. It is not clear how the pharmaceuticals were introduced to the wells.
Inland reservoirs owned by Metropolitan most likely to be tested include Diamond Valley Lake near Hemet, Lake Skinner near Temecula and Lake Mathews near Riverside. They hold imported water from the Colorado River and, in some cases, Northern California.
A study Metropolitan participated in found that the ozone treatment process at one of its plants outside the Inland region failed to remove a tranquilizer and an anti-epileptic drug from the finished drinking water.
Most water treatment plants are unable to remove pharmaceuticals people may discard down the toilet or are found in human waste. Personal care products are rinsed off bodies in the shower and end up in the wastewater as well.
While much of the Inland area’s treated wastewater flows into the Santa Ana River and down to Orange County, Inland supplies can be contaminated by imported water or by septic tanks that leach into groundwater, said Kurt Berchtold, assistant executive officer for the Santa Ana Regional Water Quality Board.
Berchtold said that as part of a settlement over a sewage spill, the city of Riverside last year agreed to launch an education program to prevent the public from dumping their pharmaceuticals down the toilet.
Meanwhile, Inland water and wastewater agencies will meet April 15 at the Santa Ana Watershed Project Authority’s headquarters in Riverside as part of a working group to develop a task force and monitoring plan, said Mark Norton, the authority’s water resources and planning manager.
Norton said there are hundreds of pharmaceuticals and that a list will be generated after 2009 so Inland agencies will know which ones to monitor on a regular basis.
The working group is in response to a request by the regional board, which is seeking to protect the quality of local supplies as more imported supplies are stored in aquifers, Norton said.
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