Marines wrestle with water threat: Many on Camp Pendleton still drinking from bottles, not tap

By: DENIS DEVINE - Staff writer | Saturday, January 28, 2006 9:00 PM PST ∞

Five months after tests revealed Camp Pendleton's southern water system was tainted with unhealthy levels of lead, base officials say they don't know what caused the contamination. Several thousand adults and children in homes, schools and a chapel on the southern half of the base are still drinking water from bottles supplied by the U.S. Marine Corps rather than their own faucets.

But base officials say they're on top of the problem, and no reports of related illnesses have surfaced.

In a response to questions e-mailed Wednesday, base officials said that a consultant hired to analyze Camp Pendleton's southern water system had determined that the base's hard water might have turned "mildly aggressive" during the August sampling that turned up the too-high levels of lead. "Aggressive" water is defined online as soft water that is either slightly acidic or rich in dissolved minerals. It often corrodes plumbing, piping and appliances in municipal and home water systems.

But what caused Camp Pendleton water's "aggression" is still unclear, as is how long the water serving half of Camp Pendleton's population may have been unsafe to drink. Base officials announced in October that further testing had also detected unsafe levels of copper in the base's tap water. Before August, the base's southern water system had last been tested for lead and copper in 2002.

Samples taken
Commonly found in soil, water and many industrial products ---- including munitions ---- lead is a metal that at high enough concentrations can damage the brain, kidneys, nervous system and red blood cells of adults, even with short-term exposure. Even at smaller doses, lead can cause developmental problems in infants and children. When it shows up in water distribution systems, the lead that was once used to solder pipe joints and fixtures is often assigned the blame.

Water pipes are commonly made of copper, which is known to cause gastrointestinal problems when consumed in high concentrations and damage livers and kidney with prolonged exposure.

In August, tests revealed tap water in six old and new base housing districts with lead concentrations higher than the federal "action level" of 15 parts per billion units of water. Further testing found high levels of lead in other areas, and residents of 14 housing areas were warned not to drink from their taps without first letting them run for a few minutes.

Spokeswoman Lt. Amanda Freeman said Friday that base officials had tested more than 1,400 individual samples since August; the most recent were taken Thursday. "From the entire 1,400 self-initiated samples, only 2.6 percent of samples exceeded the Action Level," Freeman wrote in an e-mail. "This is well below Environmental Protection Agency and California Department of Health Services compliance levels."

Blood tests reassuring
Camp Pendleton's southern water system serves all the communities, barracks and buildings south of Las Pulgas Road, with the exception of Camp Las Flores. Base officials estimate that at least 38,000 troops and civilians, including about 10,000 resident family members, depend on that water.

Since Sept. 16, the U.S. Naval Hospital on Camp Pendleton has provided 602 blood-level tests, base officials reported last week, and all have been within normal limits.

Those tests, and all the data collected by Camp Pendleton personnel, are being reviewed by a federal agency that evaluates the human health effects of exposure to hazardous substances.

The Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, a federal public health agency of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, is conducting its first review of Camp Pendleton as part of its systematic review of sites on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's National Priorities List.

The timing of the federal review isn't related to the high levels of lead first reported last September, but those results will factor into the summary document and recommendations the federal review will offer up for public comment in the coming September.

Meanwhile, base officials say they are moving to address Camp Pendleton's water problems faster than the law requires. On the advice of consultant MWH, base officials plan to add orthophosphate to the water supply. This additive will coat the pipes with a thin film to keep lead from leaching into the water supply; the technique is often used by municipal water systems facing similar problems. In addition, base officials plan to add a caustic soda to balance the water's pH.

According to the California Department of Health Services, Camp Pendleton has until August to start this so-called corrosion control treatment, and until August 2007 to finish it. But base officials wrote Wednesday they plan to have a solution in place "well ahead" of those deadlines. Asked Friday when the treatment would start, Lt. Freeman reiterated it would be "well ahead of all established guidelines and schedules."

Base violated water permit
This isn't the first time the base's water system has run afoul of the 1992 federal Lead and Copper Rule. After a Dec. 9 meeting between representatives of the base and the state's health services department, state regulators suggested in a Dec. 14 letter that base officials may have contributed to the base's water problem ---- a theory base officials strenuously reject.

The state health agency, which tests for compliance with federal water-quality standards, noted that the base violated its water permit by stopping a treatment without getting the agency's permission.

Camp Pendleton officials found high levels of copper in treated sewage sludge in 2000, levels that prevented base officials from dumping the sludge on base, said Executive Officer J.C. Malik III, the base's acting commanding officer, in a Dec. 22 memo to state officials. That prompted base officials to start adding polyphosphate, another additive used to control internal pipe corrosion, to water at one of its water treatment plants ---- the 22 Area Iron and Manganese (I/M) Plant. That treatment received a state permit in 2002.

But Malik said that the polyphosphate treatment lasted only from May to July 2003, affected just one of the southern water system's four treatment plants, and was never designed to keep lead out of the water. Base officials stopped using polyphosphate when they found it clogging up the iron and manganese filters ---- causing one problem while trying to solve another ---- and discharging turbid water into the base's pipes.

"Clearly, Camp Pendleton should have formally notified CDHS when it discontinued polyphosphate injection," Malik said. But, he added, "There is no correlation between Camp Pendleton's discontinuance of polyphosphate injection more than two years ago and the levels of lead detected in August 2005." In fact, continuing that treatment for copper may have made the lead problem worse, Malik said.

When asked whether her agency accepted Malik's analysis, a state spokeswoman said only, "It's best to ask the base this question." But Patti Roberts of the Health Services department also said that Camp Pendleton officials had been responding appropriately to the situation, and that her department was "confident" of their "future attention to this matter."

Contact staff writer Denis Devine at (760) 740-5415 or ddevine@nctimes.com.