FOUNTAIN VALLEY, Calif. – The Orange County Water District has initiated a groundwater protection and pollution containment project in the northern portion of Orange County’s large groundwater basin. The water quality protection project will be designed to contain the movement of historic industrial contamination before it threatens additional parts of the groundwater basin. The project comes on the heels of a district lawsuit filed in 2004 against several Anaheim and Fullerton area industrial businesses that the district believes are responsible for contaminating parts of the groundwater basin with industrial cleaners (volatile organic compounds (VOCs). Two city of Fullerton production wells were taken out of service in 2002 as a result of this contamination. The contamination does not currently impact any drinking water wells.

“The drinking water wells in the Fullerton, Anaheim and other areas of Orange County are safe, but these industrial solvents or VOCs are threatening a significant portion of our water supply unless we act now to contain the pollution,” said Virginia Grebbien, General Manager of the Orange County Water District. “This project will stay in place and continue to contain the contamination until the responsible parties pay for a complete cleanup program.”

The North Basin Groundwater Protection Project will consist of new water quality monitoring wells, new water extraction wells to remove contaminated groundwater and a purification plant to treat the water. The project is expected to contain the movement of the most significant pollution; gradually reduce the contamination through treatment; and safe guard the deeper parts of the basin used for groundwater production. The district plans to recover the cost of this project and the additional remediation of this contamination from the responsible parties through the current lawsuit and any future lawsuits that may be needed.

“Orange County’s groundwater basin provides more than half of the County’s water, and is a significant water asset that must be protected,” said Philip Anthony, Orange County Water District board president. “Faced with the high costs of cleaning up the VOC contamination, we must protect our rate payers from these costs and also protect our basin from further contamination by making the responsible industrial polluters pay for the cleanup.”

The North Basin Groundwater Protection Project will be done in phases. The first phase will involve installing extraction wells and additional monitoring wells in the area to gain more information for the design of the purification plant and associated pipelines. The second phase will include building the purification plant and activating the containment system. The extraction wells and the purification plant will function as a re-circulation system in the shallow aquifer.

Current plans are to keep the project online until deeper aquifers used for groundwater production are no longer threatened by the VOCs. How long the containment system operates will depend on the cleanup of numerous industrial properties where the contamination originated.  

Orange County Water District (OCWD) manages the large groundwater basin that underlies North-Central Orange County that provides most of the water for 2.3 million citizens. OCWD is committed to constantly improving Orange County’s groundwater quality and reliability in an environmentally friendly manner. With years of prudent planning and careful investment, OCWD has doubled the yield of the groundwater basin. Recently, the basin, larger that the largest reservoir in Southern California, sustained the County through a five-year drought. OCWD has also spent millions of dollar on studies by outside experts to ensure the quality of our groundwater. We want to be your trusted source for water quality. We will continue to plan and invest in ways to get more water into and out of the basin. OCWD is a special district, separate from the County of Orange, that supplies to residents in the cities of Anaheim, Buena Park, Cypress, Costa Mesa, Fountain Valley, Fullerton, Garden Grove, Huntington Beach, Irvine, La Palma, Los Alamitos, Newport Beach, Orange, Placentia, Santa Ana, Seal Beach, Stanton, Tustin, Villa Park, Westminster and Yorba Linda.