'TOILET-TO-TAP' QUESTIONS MUST BE ANSWERED.

Byline: Joel Wachs 

IF the Department of Water and Power is allowed to proceed with its ``toilet-to-tap'' drinking water proposal, people in the east San Fernando Valley, and much of central Los Angeles, will soon be forced to drink recycled sewage water. Almost as disgusting is the notable exclusion in the department's initial program of the wealthy enclaves of Bel-Air, Pacific Palisades and Brentwood.

It's enough to make you gag.

To be sure, the city has established a progressive recycled water program to enhance and expand the city's limited water resources. The city has used recycled water for several years for groundwater injection in seawater barrier areas, irrigation and industrial uses.

Recycled water is also used as cooling water at the Glendale steam plant and for irrigation purposes at Balboa Lake, Wildlife Lake and the Japanese Garden Lake.

But that's for irrigation and industrial purposes. Drinking water is something else entirely.

Current testing requirements for drinking water do not test for all possible contaminants which go into our sewer system. Indeed, only a handful of water contamination levels are now required to be tested, but there are over 100,000 known biological and chemical contaminants that are put into our sewers every day.

Many scientists acknowledge that these contaminants could make it through the treatment system and still go undetected.

In fact, legal and scientific evidence revealed in similar project proposals for the San Gabriel Valley and San Diego made it very clear that returning reclaimed sewer water into the drinking water system greatly enhances the risk of making the water unsafe.

If one also adds in the fact that the medical waste from four large hospitals is sent to the Tillman plant for treatment, the doubt about drinking water safety alone should stop this project now.

There are other choices available. One choice would be to sell the treated water to the Central Valley for irrigation. Another is to make recycled water available for use in toilets and air-conditioning systems, as is done in nearly 100 other cities, including San Jose.

Instead, the DWP apparently thought it could get away with the environmental injustice of putting this water back into the ground water system that provides drinking water for the east San Fernando Valley and central Los Angeles, where some of our poorest and most disenfranchised people live. These are people who can barely afford to buy bottled water. And they are certainly people who cannot afford attorneys, scientists and consultants to fight government for them.

Certainly, such a radical departure in our drinking water program should not even be considered without prior public approval.

Yet the DWP has almost surreptitiously shepherded through its new ``toilet-to-tap'' proposal with virtually no public disclosure, again undermining the confidence of the people in the DWP and further fueling the cries for secession.

In his opinion column in the Daily News (``Recycled water will be cleanest in aquifer,'' April 26), DWP General Manager S. David Freeman stated that a series of public meetings were conducted as early as 1991. That may be so. But, by staff's own admission, they were poorly attended. Perhaps that was because nowhere in the notices were the words ``to be used as drinking water'' ever mentioned.

Thanks to the Daily News, the DWP's cover has now been blown. The public will finally get a chance to learn the truth about what the department proposes, and will be given an opportunity to express its views before the ``toilet-to-tap'' program is put into effect.

In a recent motion introduced in the City Council, I have asked all pertinent city, state and federal agencies to report to a special joint meeting of the Environmental Quality and Waste Management Committee, the Commerce, Energy and Natural Resources Committee, and the Public Works Committee.

I have also requested a series of well-publicized community meetings to be held in the affected neighborhoods so that the public can air its concerns.

In the meantime, we should all insist that all plans to implement the East Valley Water Recycling Project for drinking water purposes be suspended until the meetings are held and the public's questions satisfactorily answered.