Villages of Columbus - Columbus Square - toxins in soil ?

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Crucialtaunt, thanks, I aim to please.



In the process of cleaning up a site, one of the first decisions made is, "how much do we clean up?" Residential clean-up levels are more rigorous than industrial clean-up levels precisely because kids are more likely to be present and they are more sensitive to some contaminants, like lead. If you are going to build homes on a property, you have to meet higher standards.



MTBE was one of those wondeful developments that had an unforeseen, and unintended consquence that caused its use to be discontinued. It did a great job of cleaning up air pollution when blended with gasoline. But it IS very soluble in water, and doesn't break down readily in the environment. So gasoline spills in and on the ground created groundwater plumes containing MTBE that doesn't degrade with time. The sprinklers use water from the public water supply (regular or recycled), not water from an untreated, contaminated plume. The real justification for keeping MTBE out of the water supply is that it is very hard to remove once its in the water, and it stinks like rotten eggs at very, very small concentrations. The water is objectionable to drink because of the odor.
 
no_vaseline... i don't think i am overreacting in anyway, but that was just your opionion, so i am fine with that.



let me explain why i started the thread... as i am signing hundreds of pages of my buy-contract i stumbled across 6 or so pages just about the former use and the possible consequences. so i am just trying to get a clearer picture of "no action is the remedy..." and 100's of pages of paperwork on the cleanup or the lack thereoff. so i just wanted to know what's going on and see if others did research or are concerned in anyway about it.



i know there is plenty of other and most likley more toxic around, like our air... but i do what i can to live a little healthier, not in all aspects but here and there. something is better than nothing.



i regards to the waterfilter. i always used a water filter for my drinking water, that costs me about $80.- a year and i don't have to buy any bottled water. the whole house water filter does cost me less than $2000.- for the next 8 to 10 years. it may or may do nothing but at $250.- a year i'm fine with that. it does take out chlorine, which does cause dry skin in some cases and as we all know taking a shower is almost the same than drinking the water. so if i filter my drinking water i should filter my shower water too. and it may or maybe not good for my dishwasher, washer, piping... and again at $250.- a year... that's less than the mello roos for a months....



all comments are welcome



thanks
 
I'm still standing by comments about the fruit trees. If the developer felt it necessary to put that info into the disclosures, and only in one area of VOC, then that's not an area I would buy in. Why? Because unlike the pizza example, I want fruit trees specifically because I would incorporate them into our diet and use around the house (lemons are a <em>great</em> nontoxic household cleaner). Power to the people who choose to live there, but it's not the right place for me.
 
On a lighter note, VOC is an interesting choice of a name for a development on a former superfund site. VOC in chemistry (from the EPA site) stands for "Volatile Organic Compounds" some of which we are discussing here. :-)
 
<p>Apparently Orange County has already started recycling waste water. Weren't we just talking about this?</p>

<p><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/27/us/27conserve.html">http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/27/us/27conserve.html</a></p>

<p> </p>

<p></p>
 
The Orange County Water District gives frequent tours of their facilities, and they are very informative. I don't know when they will start doing the tours for the new water plant, but I assume it will be shortly after it is fully completed. Yes, they take treated effluent from the wastewater treatment plant and process it to meet, and exceed, drinking water quality standards. It is then injected into the groundwater aquifer, where some of it will eventually be pumped out in water supply wells. I believe the plan is also to pump some of the water up to the Anaheim/Orange area where spreading zones along the Santa Ana river channel will allow the water to naturally percolate down into the drinking water aquifers. "Indirect water reuse" is the term of art because the water spends some time in the natural environment where natural processes can hopefully reduce the 'ick' factor. As mentioned above by Lawyerliz, there is no "virgin" water. Even the imported water we receive from the Colorado River has a recycled component. The treated wastewater from Las Vegas is discharged to the Colorado River system, upstream of the intake for the aqueduct that provides much of Southern California's water.
 
The Earth is about 4.5B years old. Anyone wanna take a guess as to how many times those water molecules have passed through something's digestive system?
 
Gollini, I'd be interested in hearing your take on the EPA's revised toxicity assessments of TCE that was issued back in 2001 and then pulled back. I seem to recall that the EPA was specifically concerned with the accumulation of TCE vapors in residential buildings.



I was living in Mountain View (in the Bay Area) in 2003-2004 when there was some genuine concern about the air levels of TCE within commercial and residential buildings on top of a former Superfund site. My girlfriend at the time had purchased a new townhome in Whisman Station, a planned community similar to the Villages of Columbus, located close to the Moffett Air Force base and on top of a former industrial manufacturing site. Unlike VOC, I think Whisman Station was on top of a TCE "hotspot", and had some active measures to vent TCE vapors from the soil into the air, above ground, so that they would not build up within homes. Despite that, later EPA testing found that a few homes on the site had levels of TCE above the EPA's revised estimates. When they released their findings, a number of people in the community put their brand new homes on the market, at reduced prices.



In the end, I believe the former site owners ended up paying for additional venting towers, and the homes that were directly affected were modified in some way, even though the EPA pulled back its revised risk assessment for TCE. As far as I know, the Whisman Station development has rebounded and the prices are inline with comparable homes in the area.



I've read through the EPA's latest report on the Tustin site, and TCE is NOT listed as one of the contaminants under the Columbus sites. But my previous experience with Whisman Station has convinced me to at least be fully aware of any potential risks in an area I am considering buying a home.
 
Sorry, but I pretty much leave the toxicity issues to the toxicologists. They will ALWAYS have disagreements about how toxic a substance is, simply because they are trying to do their work while spying through a telescope backwards. They are trying to measure potential health effects in large populations, over long periods of time, from very low levels of contamination, usually using short-term tests on very small populations at very high levels of contamination. Also, they can't use humans as test subjects, for obvious reasons. So they end up with results that have to be extrapolated far beyond their actual measurement range, and assume that their test animals will behave similar to humans. Having said that, there is reason to be concerned, and to have the toxicologists give the very best assessments they can, even if these are only marginally better than a wild guess using a random number generator. When, unfortunately, large populations of human beings ARE the unintentional test subjects, there have been truly tragic results. You can google "Minamata" to see information that led me to pursue my Ph.D. in environmental engineering thirty years ago.
 
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