G. Fred Lee & Associates
________________________________________
27298 E. El Macero Dr.
El Macero, California 95618-1005
Tel. (530) 753-9630 • Fax (530) 753-9956
e-mail [email protected]
web site: http://members.aol.com/gfredlee/gfl.htm
Please note the new area code for telephone and fax has been changed to 530

VIA E-MAIL: [email protected]

January, 1998

Julie Roth, Executive Director
DSCSOC
Route 2, Box 2879
Davis, CA 95616

Dear Julie:

Attached is a set of comments concerning the December, 1997 RPM meeting. I have focused these comments on two areas, the DOE EE/CA and the deficiencies in the UCD stormwater runoff monitoring program. With respect to the UCD stormwater monitoring program, as you know, UCD is continuing to stall in developing a credible program for monitoring stormwater runoff from the LEHR site. It is now over two and a half years since the DSCSOC first pointed out the deficiencies in that program. The recent outline of the proposed program provided at the RPM meeting falls far short of a credible program. I suggest that we proceed with contacting the Regional Board asking them to formally review the adequacy of this monitoring program compared to the requirements set forth in the NPDES permit.

I have also provided summary information on some of my work on stormwater runoff water quality monitoring which has relevance to the LEHR site issues. During the past few months I have completed a major report on the stormwater monitoring program that I am conducting in Orange County, California, as well as presenting several papers pertinent to this topic area. I have provided reference to most of these papers and reports through my website. Most of the papers and reports are already on my website. I will provide you with hard copies of them to be included in the LEHR site library repositories. I can provide hard copies to anyone interested.

If you have questions about these comments, please contact me.

Sincerely yours,

G. Fred Lee, PhD, DEE

GFL:jlc

Comments on
UCD/DOE LEHR National Superfund Site RPM Meeting
held December 17, 1997

Submitted by

Dr. G. Fred Lee, DEE
Technical Advisor to DSCSOC
G. Fred Lee & Associates
El Macero, CA 95618
PH: (530) 753-9630
FX: (530) 753-9956
e-mail: [email protected]
http://members.aol.com/gfredlee/gfl.htm

A considerable part of the December 17, 1997 RPM meeting was devoted to DOE's presentation of the draft EE/CA for initial clean-up of the Southwest Trenches, Radium-226/Strontium-90 Treatment Systems, and Domestic Septic System Areas at the Laboratory for Energy-Related Health Research Site. The key issues that must be resolved with respect to waste management clean-up were outlined by Duncan Austin at the RPM meeting. This is at least the second or third time over the past year or so, that these issues have been discussed. As discussed in previous comments, DOE is attempting to persist with a technically invalid approach for LEHR site clean-up. Several years ago, DOE management made the decision that rather than doing a comprehensive investigation of the waste management units to adequately characterize the wastes in those areas that are DOE's responsibility for remediation, it would conduct a limited field investigation (LFI) as part of an initial characterization that was at the time said to be designed to provide initial information which could be used for more comprehensive characterization studies. D. Austin, DSCSOC through my comments, as well as others, pointed out that the initial studies would not be adequate for site characterization for any other purpose than concluding that complete removal of the wastes and contaminated soils should occur. This LFI was not adequate to define the degree of contamination at the site due to migration of waste from the waste management units.

Duncan Austin repeatedly made this clear at several RPM meetings. Independently I strongly supported his findings. Changes in the DOE management staff has resulted in a change in approach for use of the LFI data. No longer are these data proposed to be used for overall screening with respect to complete removal or not. Attempts are being made now to use it as a basis for developing the overall approach to be followed including establishing clean-up objectives, constituents of concern, etc. of the LEHR site that are under DOE's responsibility.

Now DOE is attempting to get RPM and DSCSOC buy-off on site clean-up objectives and approaches under conditions where the waste management units under concern have not been adequately characterized. While DOE contractors (Weiss Associates) claimed at the December 17, 1997 RPM meeting that there has been a reversal of regulatory agency position on key issues with respect to LEHR site clean-up under the EE/CA, the facts are that these issues have been clearly laid out to DOE and its contractors for well over a year. The basic problem is that DOE and its contractors have chosen to ignore the repeated messages provided to them by Duncan Austin and myself on behalf of DSCSOC that the approaches that they are trying to follow are not acceptable. Under conditions of such limited characterization of the waste management units and the very significant problems that have existed in how DOE and its contractors have proceeded with estimating groundwater impacts through vadose zone modeling which are well known to be fundamentally technically invalid, DOE and its contractors continue to ignore these issues, evidently thinking that somehow that D. Austin, DSCSOC and others are going to accept the technically invalid approaches that have been put forth in determining the approach for assessing adequate clean-up.

Under conditions where the waste management units under current discussion are so poorly characterized, the approach that D. Austin advocates of first removal of the wastes, and obvious (based on visual inspection) contaminated areas associated with these waste management units should be followed. After the waste and obvious soil contamination has been removed then at that point a detailed investigation should be conducted to determine what additional clean-up is necessary. As I pointed out, this investigation must consider the fact that vadose zone transport of constituents is not, as Weiss has assumed, a uniform wetted front, based on the average moisture content for the year, but occurs in pulses along preferential pathways. The waste management units at the LEHR site that are DOE's responsibility will have to proceed with a further excavate and further characterized approach. This interactive approach is the only approach that can be used under the current characterization of the waste management units.

At the RPM meeting I asked Brian Oatman about UCD's approach for cleaning up waste management areas where he indicated to me that UCD's approach will be that of removal of obvious contamination, further characterization and removal of additional contamination based on this characterization of contamination near the waste management unit. This is the technically valid approach in light of the current information at the LEHR site.

At the December 17, 1997 meeting, I indicated that there were two important issues that I felt must be addressed, if not in the EE/CA, then in the work plan for the implementation of the EE/CA. One of these is the issue of migration of constituents in the vadose zone from the waste management unit along preferential pathways. DOE and its contractors must address this issue in a technically valid manner. The assumption of a uniform transport of waste-derived constituents from the waste pits will not be accepted. It is obviously technically invalid based on what has been known for over 15 years in vadose zone transport investigations and modeling.

At the December 17, 1997 meeting, DOE staff announced that they have apparently discovered that they do not have the funds that are needed to remediate the waste management units that are currently under consideration which would involve excavating the waste and transporting it to another location for off-site disposal. It has been apparent for some time that DOE-Oakland has been making behind-the-scenes, without RPM and public review, decisions on site remediation approaches which have been passed on to DOE-Washington, D.C. on the potential costs of site remediation. It is now being found that the costs for remediating the waste that were mismanaged by the University of California, Davis as part of its LEHR site operations are far greater than what DOE-Oakland was apparently projecting to DOE Washington, D.C.

When I first became involved in this matter two and a half years ago and I learned about some of the projections of proposed approaches for managing the waste in the waste management units, such as a less than RCRA cover, I informed DSCSOC and through DSCSOC the RPMs that that approach would not be acceptable. Evidently DOE-Oakland management chose to ignore these comments and are now finding that their initial projections on site-remediation costs are far less than what will actually have to be spent for waste management unit remediation.

I find it somewhat contradictory that now DOE-Oakland claims that they can dig and store wastes over a period of a year or so through one or more precipitation seasons while a few months ago they were claiming that it was not possible to do site characterization under conditions that would involve controlling the precipitation entering the areas of excavation. As I pointed out at the previous RPM meetings, most of the Superfund sites in this country are located in areas where there is rainfall throughout the year at the rate of several inches per month. The typical conditions that exist in the California/Davis area during the winter occur year-round throughout most of the US east of the Mississippi River where most of the US Superfund sites are located. It is readily possible to control precipitation entrance into an excavation pit associated with excavation and characterization of a waste management unit.

The other issue that I pointed out during the December 17, 1997 RPM meeting that is missing from the DOE-proposed approach in the EE/CA is the monitoring that DOE will commit to support based on the degree of clean-up that is selected based on all the factors that have to be considered to protect public health and the environment from many waste residues left at the site after remediation. As I indicated, on behalf of DSCSOC, to buy off on a less than full remediation considering preferential pathway issues, there should be assurances that DOE will adequately and reliably monitor the site ad infinitum to ensure that any errors that are made in less-than-complete clean-up of the site to a full proper background, does not result in significant public health or environmental threats. As long as DOE refuses to make a commitment on the long-term, ad infinitum monitoring that will be done, then DSCSOC, and I presume others will have to assume plausible worst-case situations where DOE would do minimum monitoring and therefore it will be necessary to require greater clean-up than would be possible if DOE would commit to a comprehensive, in-depth monitoring approach of the residual waste-derived constituents at the site. I suggested that the draft EE/CA Figure E-1 add an additional monitoring box beyond "Check on Attainment of RAOs" which represents an on-going, continued comprehensive monitoring program for the LEHR site waste management units.

As both Susan Timm and I pointed out, DOE-Oakland apparently has the mistaken belief that it may not be necessary to monitor the residual wastes left at the site forever. The sheet passed out at the December 17, 1997 meeting, entitled "LEHR Environmental Restoration Activities Through 2006 (From DOE's 2006 Plan)" lists as the last item, "Site Surveillance and Monitoring (if necessary)." As was pointed out, this is more of the technically invalid approaches that DOE-Oakland management are trying to foster on the RPMs and the public with respect to LEHR site remediation. As was discussed, there is no question about the fact that ad infinitum monitoring will be required at the LEHR site. This is in accord with CERCLA requirements; it is also in accord with the basic principles of public health and environmental protection. DOE-Oakland management should stop trying to infer that ad infinitum, highly reliable monitoring of the residual wastes/contaminated soils may not be needed. It will be needed to ensure that any assumptions made associated with site investigation and remediation are proven to be valid. Further, DOE-Oakland should understand that the degree of remediation that is required at the LEHR site associated with each waste management unit will be directly dependent on the commitment that is made for ad infinitum comprehensive monitoring.

There were extensive discussions at the December 17, 1997 meeting on the issue of cleaning up to background. This is the second or third time that this has been discussed at an RPM meeting. I have previously pointed out that it is inappropriate to assume, as it continues to be done by DOE and its contractors, that background associated with an area that has potentially been contaminated by wastes from a waste management unit is not the same environmental threat as background from an area that has not been potentially contaminated by waste-derived constituents. As I have discussed in previous comments provided to DSCSOC and through DSCSOC to the RPMs, the assumption that chemical concentrations at or near background represent the same threat when near a waste management unit is fundamentally flawed in that it assumes that the chemicals of concern derived from the waste management unit such as radium 226, etc. are in the same chemical forms as the naturally occurring chemical constituents of the region. Those familiar with the elements of aquatic chemistry know that such assumptions can readily be in significant error. The concentration of radium 226 derived from the waste management unit at or near background for the region, when derived from the waste management unit, can be a significantly different threat to public health, groundwater resources and the environment than naturally occurring background radium. I have previously provided a detailed discussion of this issue in a report to DSCSOC. This has been ignored by DOE and its contractors in the EE/CA.

In my previous comments I have pointed out how the state of New Jersey attempted to follow the same approach in disposal of radium 226 wastes where when these issues were brought to the courts, the court ruled, based on my testimony, that the state's approach was technically invalid and forced the state to abandon disposal of radium 226-containing wastes which would not have changed the overall background levels from those of the granitic rocks of the area. However, the waste radium 226 and the granitic rock radium are in significantly different chemical forms where their migration to groundwater would be expected to be different. The same kind of situation can readily occur at the LEHR site. DOE, UCD and its contractors are still operating with inadequate aquatic chemistry expertise where year after year they continue to make the same fundamental errors in their approaches toward addressing these issues.

Just prior to the December 17, 1997 RPM meeting, S. Attiga sent out an e-mail discussing the issues of the very slow rate at which minutes of the previous RPM meetings are being developed. I wish to lend my support to his raising of this issue. It is highly inappropriate for minutes of RPM meetings to take more than about two weeks from when the meeting is held until they are distributed for RPM participants' and others' review. The current process for handling meeting minutes is grossly deficient and should be changed.

At the RPM meeting discussions were held on the current status of the ATSDR and UCD mercury studies. As I mentioned at that meeting I had presented a poster session paper at the national Society for Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry meeting that was held in San Francisco during mid-November, 1997, devoted to "Development of Technically Valid, Cost-Effective Hg Control for Sacramento River Delta & Upper San Francisco Bay." The poster items from that paper have been put on my website (http://members.aol.com/gfredlee/gfl.htm) or are available from me. That paper presents information that is pertinent to review of the excessive mercury bioaccumulation problem that is occurring in Putah Creek fish near where the LEHR site stormwater runoff enters the Creek and where UCD's campus wastewater treatment plant discharges to the Creek.

Currently based on 1987 US EPA "Gold Book" values, the water quality criterion for mercury is 12 ng/L. This is based on total recoverable mercury, focusing on bioaccumulation issues. As I mentioned at the December 17, 1997 RPM meeting, as a result of the US EPA Region 9 development of the draft California Toxics Rule (CTR) in August 1997, the regulatory approaches for mercury are changing. Initially, if adopted as proposed, the toxicity of mercury to aquatic life and its bioaccumulation which represent a threat to human health and higher trophic level organisms that use the lower trophic level organisms as food will be increased. The aquatic life toxicity issues are a factor of 10 higher than those of concern for excessive bioaccumulation. Based on the CTR, the US EPA will initially raise the bioaccumulation-based water quality criterion for mercury to 50/51 ng/L. This, however, is a temporary situation. As summarized in the poster session items, based on the US EPA's national review of mercury that is currently underway through the Science Advisory Board, the new criterion value is expected to be decreased to 3 to 5 ng/L. This will be based on total recoverable mercury.

If the current regulatory approach is implemented, the LEHR site, as well as all other NPDES-permitted stormwater and wastewater discharges will have to meet the approximately 5 ng/L discharge limit that will arise from the US EPA's new water quality criterion that is ultimately adopted. Therefore, with respect to planning stormwater runoff analytical programs for the LEHR site, it will be necessary in order to comply with US EPA water quality criteria to be able to measure total recoverable mercury in the stormwater runoff at a concentration on the order of a couple of ng/L. While it is my understanding that this is possible with specialized techniques, there may be significant problems of doing this on a routine basis with conventional analytical methods. I have not evaluated that situation thoroughly, and it is possible that the US EPA has developed or will be developing in the near future analytical methods that would comply with the ultimately soon to be released new water quality criterion for mercury of a few ng/L.

While at the RPM meeting B. Oatman indicated that UCD was waiting to see the results of the toxicity testing and bioaccumulation studies that ATSDR and UCD were conducting before they incorporated toxicity testing and bioaccumulation into the stormwater runoff water quality monitoring and impact evaluation. As I mentioned this is an inappropriate approach. Bioaccumulation and toxicity testing should have been incorporated into the stormwater runoff water quality monitoring program many years ago. As discussed in my review of earlier documents developed at the LEHR site, a previous DOE contractor made a significant error in developing the study plan for the LEHR site RI/FS by failing to understand and reliably report on the appropriate role of toxicity testing and bioaccumulation assessments and the interaction between these two potential impacts in evaluating the potential water quality impacts of stormwater runoff. Both bioaccumulation and toxicity testing must be a standard ongoing component of any credible stormwater runoff water quality monitoring program.

About a year and a half ago, largely as a result of the poor quality of stormwater runoff water quality monitoring program being conducted at the LEHR site by DOE and UCD and the persistence of this program after the significant errors in it were pointed out on several occasions at RPM meetings, I developed an extensive discussion of the problems with this program and provided guidance on how it should be changed. This discussion was made available to the RPMs and the PRPs- UCD and DOE. I also condensed that report into a paper "Developing of a Stormwater Runoff Water Quality Evaluation and Management Program for Hazardous Chemical Sites" that will be presented next week at the American Society for Testing and Materials Third Symposium on Superfund Risk Assessment in San Diego. A copy of the slides from this presentation as well as a preprint of this paper has been placed on my website. Copies are also available directly from me. The paper has extensively been peer reviewed and will be published with minor modifications from its original form in the proceedings of the conference. This paper as well as the slides focus on the importance of toxicity testing and bioaccumulation assessments as basic components of any credible stormwater runoff monitoring program.

As discussed in this paper, the US EPA's water pollution control program is based on controlling chemical constituent concentrations and not chemical impacts. For mercury, this means that typically the Agency's approach of limiting the discharge of mercury to the water quality criterion for Putah Creek-like situations will result in significant over-regulation of mercury in the discharge since, with few exceptions, the total recoverable mercury measured in a discharge is rarely all available for conversion to methylmercury in the receiving water sediments. It has been my position, and I know a number of others agree with this position, that the Agency should abandon the chemical constituent concentration approach and focus on chemical impacts. This is a far more reliable technically valid approach than that currently used. However, as long as the Agency maintains its Independent Applicability Policy, dischargers, such as UCD's stormwater runoff and wastewaters, must comply with the Agency's requirements of meeting the criterion value in the discharge independent of whether the mercury discharged in a form that can be converted to methylmercury and bioaccumulate in fish in the receiving waters for the discharge.

Just prior to the December RPM meeting Bill Taylor of ATSDR sent an e-mail giving current status of the ATSDR re-sampling of Putah Creek fish as part of the bioaccumulation studies that were conducted this past fall. According to Dr. Taylor, no information is available at this time of the sampling other than less fish were obtained of a desired size than had been planned for in the re-sampling studies. B. Oatman mentioned that D. Slotten, a university researcher who has worked on mercury bioaccumulation problems at various locations, was also conducting a study funded by the University of mercury bioaccumulation in Putah Creek fish. I have previously pointed out in comments to DSCSOC which have been passed on to the RPMs and UCD, that if the D. Slotten studies are to have any credibility as independent studies, the proposed study plan must be reviewed by the RPMs and others as appropriate. B. Oatman, at the December RMP meeting, claimed that the Slotten studies are studies being conducted by a university research project which is not related to potential impacts of LEHR site stormwater runoff and campus wastewater discharges on Putah Creek. If it is not related to LEHR, why is it initiated by the University administration after it was found that wastewater discharges and stormwater runoff from UCD result in excessive mercury in fish taken from Putah Creek near where these discharges occur, but not upstream or downstream of these discharges.

While members of the UCD administration have tried to discredit the ATSDR studies, as discussed in previous comments that I have made, this attempt is obvious and inappropriate. If anything, the ATSDR studies would show that the excessive accumulation of mercury and lead in fish near the campus sewage plant discharge and LEHR site stormwater runoff areas near Old Davis Road would be higher for gamefish that people would typically eat, than for the mixed sized populations that were used. Larger fish and higher trophic level fish are well known to accumulate more mercury in their edible tissue than that which typically occurs in smaller fish.

Based on the comments by B. Oatman at the December 17, 1997 meeting, the studies that have been conducted by D. Slotten on Putah Creek fish were conducted contrary to the requests made by DSCSOC for prior public review of the study plan. Without prior public review, this could readily cause these studies to have limited reliability because of the failure to properly consider the full interests of the public in the development, implementation and reporting of the results. This could be another of UCD's highly biased studies, such as the cumulative impact study of UCD's wastewater discharges on water quality within Putah Creek which was incorporated into UCD's self-certified EIR for the proposed construction of a new campus wastewater treatment plant where UCD controlled the results of the study. This contractor did not present information on or the need to have information on aquatic life toxicity or bioaccumulation of mercury, lead, etc. in evaluating cumulative impacts of UCD's wastewater discharges on Putah Creek aquatic life and public health.

It was the public who requested of the Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board, the cumulative impact studies of UCD's wastewater discharges on Putah Creek water quality. The public specified in this request that these must be full public peer review studies where UCD could not manipulate the results through controlling the contractor's reports. The UCD Vanderhoef administration rejected that approach and instead developed a behind the scenes deal with the Regional Water Quality Control Board chairman which would allow UCD to have complete control of the outcome of the cumulative impact studies under conditions where the public was denied any opportunity to comment on these studies until the final report was published. The public had previously learned about how UCD through its EIRs manipulated information to support its previously developed positions on issues in order to proceed with campus development projects such as the construction of a new landfill that even if its own staff acknowledges, will eventually pollute ground waters. If UCD had proceeded as the public had requested with respect to the development of the cumulative impact studies with full public review of the proposed plan for these studies, UCD would have known prior to their initiation that any study that did not include aquatic life toxicity and bioaccumulation was fundamentally flawed and a waste of UCD's - the public's funds. If any of the RPMs or others are interested in detailed comments on these issues, please contact me. They are available on my web site (http://members.aol.com/gfredlee/gfl.htm) where I discuss the highly significant deficiencies in UCD's self-certified EIR for its proposed new campus wastewater treatment plant development.

While I am sure there will be some who will try to assert that the UCD mercury (Slotten) studies will not be slanted toward UCD's previously adopted positions on issues, such assertions could readily be a significant error. Having been involved for 30 years in university teaching and research as director of various environmental engineering and science programs, I am fully aware of the pressures that university administrations can place on faculty to develop research results in support of the university's positions on issues. There are a few faculty who will conduct studies that produce results that show that the university is in fact a recalcitrant polluter of the area. A faculty member that reports such results will soon find themselves in great disfavor with the administration. It is for this reason that I strongly urged when I first learned from university administration statements in the LEHR Newsletter, that the University was going to gather its own data to counter the ATSDR mercury data. The University's gathering of its own data must be conducted in a full public peer review arena in order to protect D. Slotten and others from the kinds of pressures that can be exerted on him to slant his studies to support the University's announced position that it is not the University that is responsible for the excessive bioaccumulation of mercury and lead that was found at the point where the University's wastewater discharges and LEHR site stormwater runoff enter Putah Creek.

One of the most significant deficiencies with the DOE and UCD stormwater runoff monitoring from the LEHR site has been the failure to incorporate aquatic life toxicity testing in the runoff waters as well as the receiving waters. During the RPM meeting, B. Oatman mentioned that UCD was waiting until we see the results from the other studies on Putah Creek before it finalized its stormwater runoff monitoring program. He specifically mentioned Dr. V. Connor's toxicity studies. I pointed out at the RMP meeting that it is unlikely that the Val Connor studies on toxicity in Cache Creek and Putah Creek will provide the data needed for proper toxicity measurements in the stormwater runoff and the receiving waters. Following this meeting, I obtained a copy of the initial draft sampling program for the studies. Only one toxicity test monthly over a year will be taken near UCD discharges associated with the LEHR site and campus wastewaters. This is grossly inadequate to characterize the impact of stormwater runoff-associated toxic constituents on receiving water beneficial uses. The CVRWQCB Yolo County Department of Health toxicity studies on Putah Creek and Cache Creek are not designed to investigate specific sources of toxic constituents, but instead focus on providing general information on toxicity that exists within these creeks over the one year study period.

With each stormwater runoff event, aquatic life toxicity using US EPA 3-species chronic tests should be measured. As I have discussed in previous comments on the deficiencies in the current LEHR site stormwater monitoring, these measurements should be made during the time that the site is under investigation and remediation and until several years after the state site has become stabilized with respect to remediation activities. At that time, it would be possible to reduce the frequency of toxicity monitoring provided that no toxicity is found in the stormwater runoff waters.

Over the past year it has been found that the University of California, Davis wastewater discharges to Putah Creek at the point where wastewater discharges are sometimes toxic to aquatic life. While UCD administration claims that this is not a violation of their NPDES permit, UCD has finally been ordered by the CVRWQCB to stop these toxic discharges.

I will be surprised if Putah Creek is not toxic to some forms of aquatic life with each stormwater runoff event and that at least at some times and possibly all the time stormwater runoff from the LEHR site will be toxic. This toxicity will likely be due in part to organophosphate pesticides such as diazinon and possibly chlorpyrifos. At times, Dr. Val Connor and others in the Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board have found widespread aquatic life toxicity throughout northern California in stormwater runoff. This toxicity is caused by diazinon used as a dormant spray in orchards. The toxic chemical (diazinon) is carried for considerable distances through the atmosphere and comes down to the surface through fogfall and rainfall. This has important implications for LEHR site stormwater runoff in that it almost certainly will mean that toxicity measurements alone will not be adequate. As planning for LEHR site stormwater runoff studies, toxicity investigation evaluations (TIES)of the stormwater runoff to be conducted will need to be conducted to determine if the toxicity found is exclusively due to diazinon and other organophosphate pesticides that are not part of the residual waste materials at the LEHR site, or whether the toxicity is a combination of diazinon and LEHR site-derived wastes.

I have been involved for the past couple of years in stormwater runoff aquatic life toxicity issues in Orange County, California as it may impact Upper Newport Bay beneficial uses, and have developed a comprehensive report on the Phase 1 studies on Upper Newport Bay titled "Aquatic Life Toxicity in Stormwater Runoff to Upper Newport Bay, Orange County, California: Initial Results." This report is available on my website or from me upon request.

I have presented several invited presentations on the Upper Newport Bay studies, including a presentation to the State Stormwater Task Force in early November 1997 and a subsequent presentation to the Urban Pesticides Committee which is chaired by Dr. Val Connor and Dr. Tom Mumley. Dr. Connor is with the Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board, and Dr. Mumley is with the San Francisco Regional Water Quality Control Board. A copy of the slides used in these presentations is available on my website. The website also presents other papers and reports discussing aquatic life toxicity issues.

Another of my recent activities that has pertinence to the LEHR site stormwater runoff monitoring and impact evaluation situation is a paper that I presented at the Society for Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry national meeting that was held in San Francisco in mid-November 1997 devoted to "Evaluation Monitoring for Stormwater Runoff Water Quality Impact Assessment and Management." Evaluation Monitoring is the approach that should be used to determine what, if any, real water quality impacts are associated with stormwater runoff from the LEHR site. It was developed in connection with the work that I have been doing in Orange County with the Santa Ana Regional Water Quality Control Board and the County of Orange stormwater quality management agency. I have previously published a number of papers and reports on Evaluation Monitoring which are available from my website. The November, 1997 paper provides an undated overall synthesis of this previous work.

UCD must immediately initiate comprehensive on-going toxicity and bioaccumulation studies on Putah Creek specifically directed toward determining if stormwater runoff from the LEHR site, as well as other UCD property is adversely impacting the beneficial uses of Putah Creek. The UCD L. Vanderhoef administration stalling on a credible stormwater runoff monitoring and impact assessment for the LEHR site can not continue to be allowed. Unless there is immediate full commitment to comprehensive bioaccumulation studies, this matter will be taken to the regional board for their review. The current stormwater monitoring program falls far short of a credible program that meets the conditions of UCD's stormwater NPDES permit.

There is increasing evidence that dioxin could readily be a constituent of concern in Putah Creek some of which may be derived from the LEHR site. Dioxin is being found to be ubiquitous in the environment. It has been found to occur in potentially significant concentrations in highway and street runoff in the San Francisco Bay region. It is present in essentially all combustion wastes. It would be expected to be present in the UCD landfill wastes that have been deposited at the LEHR site. With Landfill No. 3 wastes still exposed to be washed by every stormwater runoff event as the result of the UCD administration digging a channel through the top of Landfill No. 3 exposing wastes to stormwater runoff that enters Putah Creek, there still could be transport of dioxins from these wastes as well as other sources to Putah Creek which is bioaccumulating to excessive levels in Putah Creek fish. Dioxin must be added to the parameters of concern in Putah Creek fish and in stormwater runoff from the LEHR site.

An area that has been of concern to me for many years, is technically invalid approaches used by federal, state and local agencies to regulate chemical constituents and pathogenic organisms in wastewater discharges and/or stormwater runoff. I have recently completed two sets of comments on problems with current regulatory approaches for chemical constituents in aquatic systems. One set, "Comments on Policy for Implementation of Toxics Standards for Inland Surface Waters, Enclosed Bays, and Estuaries of California," was submitted on December 7, 1997 in response to the State Water Resources Control Board's request for comments on the draft Policy for Implementation of the California Toxics Rule. The other, "Comments on Current Deficiencies in US EPA/USDA Water Pollution Control Programs: Suggested Revisions as Part of the Clean Water Action Plan" was developed in response to the Clean Water Act Action Policy issues initiated by Vice-President Gore in which the US EPA and the USDA have requested comments on problems with current regulatory approaches. Both of these sets of comments have been put on my web site (http://members.aol.com/gfredlee/gfl.htm).

The US EPA administration in Washington, D.C. understands many of the problems with the current regulatory approaches that lead to over-regulation of the regulated i.e. those with water quality criteria, chemical constituents in stormwater runoff and wastewater discharges. They have proposed to make changes in these requirements. Such changes, however, are being vigorously opposed by environmental groups since it would mean that the overly-simplistic approach of comparing a chemical concentration in a runoff sample or a wastewater discharge to a water quality standard would no longer be possible. It is not clear that the current US EPA administration will have sufficient political power to follow through with changing the regulatory approaches to protect the designated beneficial uses of receiving waters without causing dischargers to unnecessarily spend funds for controlling inert or non-toxic constituents. Meanwhile, while at least for several years, estimated to be five to ten years, UCD and other NPDES-permitted stormwater dischargers will be required to fully conform to US EPA and state of California stormwater runoff water quality management requirements which will include proper monitoring of stormwater runoff from the LEHR site. Such monitoring has not been done correctly thus far; it will have to be done. UCD has been dilatory in the extreme in developing a credible stormwater runoff monitoring program from the LEHR site. The problems with the existing program which were first pointed out in the fall of 1995 have persisted now for several years where public funds have been wasted through an inappropriately developed and conducted monitoring program.