By lisagracekellogg@icloud.com | on July 29, 2022

Assistant Public Works Director Joseph Marcinko (City of Oxnard)

Oxnard– The Public Works and Transportation Committee, Tuesday, July 26, reviewed the City’s Water Division Public Health Goals (PHG) Report.

T HE City is required to prepare a Public Health Goal Report, in accordance with California Health and Safety Code 116470(b), if water exceeds any Public Health Code in the three previous calendar years.

Assistant Public Works Director Joseph Marcinko told the committee that the Public Health Grades must include any contaminant detected above a (PHG) or MCLG (Maximum Contaminant Level Goals).

“It must also include health risk information on the detected contaminants, the estimated costs associated with the installation of best available technology (BAT) to help reduce the level of a given contaminant,” he said. “What action, if necessary, to help reduce the level of a given contaminant, and what action, if any, will be taken to help reduce the level of the contaminant and the basis for that decision.”

He said PHGs are established by the California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment.

“Goals used as public health risk assessment are not required to be met by public water systems non-enforceable standards,” Marcinko said. “Levels of chemicals that would not cause adverse health effects in people who drink the water every day for 70 years.”

He said MCLGs are the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) equivalent of PHGs or levels of contaminants in drinking water with no known or expected risk to human health.

“Non-enforceable public health goals are different than maximum containment level,” he said. “What quality data collected from the City of Oxnard’s Water Distribution System between 2019 and 2021 was used to determine compliance with state and federal drinking water standards and this report.”

He said the Annual Water Quality Data is included in the Consumer Confidence Reports and available to residents, customers, and businesses.

“The City’s most recent Consumer Confidence Report is available at oxnard.org/ccr,” he said.

Marcinko said 11 constituents were detected that exceeded a PHG or MCLG are arsenic, cadmium, gross alpha particle activity, gross beta particle activity, radium 226, and radium 228, uranium trihalomethanes, bromodichloromethane, bromoform, chloroform, and diberomochloromethane.

“Factors included in this report are analytical detection capabilities, treatment technology available benefits and costs,” he said.

The best available technology selected to remove the constituents, he said, was Reverse Osmosis (RO), and three facilities are estimated to cost $90.9 million to construct and $27.1 million to operate and maintain annually.

“Three RO facilities are determined to be necessary to achieve removal by treating 7.5 million gallons per day of water,” he said.

Marcinko noted that adding the reverse osmosis treatment to the water system to remove the particles will increase a customer’s annual water bill by $508 per year.

“PHG and MCLG levels are extremely low, not close to the MCL levels, and not enforceable water quality standards,” he said. “Because the City is in compliance with the State of California and Federal Drinking Water Maximum Containment Levels, the staff does not recommend installing costly treatment processes to reduce the levels below PHG and MCLG levels.”

Committee Member Mayor John Zaragoza asked for an explanation about PHG, and Marcinko said it’s a difficult report.

“It’s a state regulation that we have to go through every three years and look at the water quality data, and we have to compare that to what are called public health goals,” Marcinko said. “Public health goals are what the Office of Health Hazard Assessment comes up with, which is the lowest concentration of a chemical contaminant that they feel if a person consumes that they wouldn’t have any health effects if they drink that over their lifetime.”

He noted that the public health goals are small amounts that, over a lifetime, would not pose a health issue.

“Then you have a maximum contaminant level in water where this is a level in drinking water if you exceed it, that you have a probability, not an exact cause you’re going to have some kind of health effect,” he said.

Committee Member Council Woman Vianey Lopez asked where the report began, and Marcinko said it began in the legislature in the 1990s.

“They wanted to be able to have water systems, and this applies to systems that have over 10,000 service connections,” Marcinko said. “Go down and look at some of their public health goals because they are estimated to cause some kind of health problem over time in that low concentration. They wanted the utilities to look at that.”

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