Nitrates

I am a seventh-grader at South Lake Middle School in Irvine. I am writing to you in regards of the problems involving the Newport Back Bay and the Irvine Ranch Water District. On May 21 our class took a trip to the Newport Back Bay. We went around the area looking at the birds and animals in the bay. We went around to different stations and had different things we had to write about. We are now in the process of making an album to describe our two days at the bay. On May 23 our class took another trip to test different sites along the San Diego Creek.

They call it ANFO--ammonium nitrate and fuel oil. For homeowners demanding lush, verdant lawns and farmers producing bountiful crops, ammonium nitrate is a common product. For large-scale mining firms and industrial demolition operations, that chemical blended with ordinary fuel oil produces a relatively inexpensive and effective explosive.

Applying a form of the common antiseptic Betadine to the eyes of newborn children could prevent as many as 10,000 cases of blindness and hundreds of thousands of severe eye infections each year worldwide, UCLA researchers report today. Silver nitrate or antibiotics are commonly used in this country and Europe to prevent such infections, but the drugs are too expensive to be used in developing countries and can trigger inflammation.

Nitrate levels do not meet public safety standards in about one fourth of 101 wells tested in Agua Dulce, according to preliminary tests by a team of UC Riverside scientists studying a longstanding and divisive issue in the hilly, rural community.

The Pomona City Council has awarded a $4-million contract to build the world's largest facility to remove nitrates from water. Anthony J. Skvarek, a Water Department manager, said the plant--to be built at a reservoir at 3rd and Electra streets--will reduce the city's dependence on imported water by removing nitrates from ground water. Nitrates have seeped into the Chino Basin from fertilizer used in citrus groves and from dairy and livestock operations in the region, he said.

The city has been named the likely site of a test project that would use a harmless bacteria to remove a pollutant from ground water. The Metropolitan Water District, Southern California's major water supplier, and the Orange County Water District have agreed to spend $310,000 each on the project. The plan calls for the bacteria to be added to tanks containing water with nitrates, the most common pollutant in Southern California ground water.

If the state's drought has done nothing else, it has pointed up the importance of stable underground water supplies that aren't affected by every change in the weather. In three Southern California counties, these underground supplies, fed by the Santa Ana River, are threatened by nitrates, a pollutant that is especially dangerous to children.

After five years of debate and delays in resolving one of Southern California's most severe water pollution problems, state officials are completing a cleanup strategy for the Santa Ana River that affects three counties and could cost half a billion dollars. A recently released report that took three years and $1 million to compile outlines the solutions, all of which are controversial and expensive.

A five-year federal study of the nation's drinking water wells indicates that more than half are tainted with nitrates and a small number contain traces of pesticides, but officials said Tuesday that there is no "current cause for concern" about public health.

Ground water tainted by decades of septic tank use is being reclaimed in La Crescenta, where a $2.1-million nitrate treatment plant--the first of its kind in Southern California--was dedicated last week. The Crescenta Valley County Water District's Glenwood Treatment Facility is expected to pay for itself in 10 years, reduce the cost of supplying water to the district's 8,000 customers and eventually help clean the local ground-water supply, said Robert K. Argenio, district manager.