CLEAN RIVER AT WHAT COST? SIDES DIFFER ON SANTA CLARA SALT ISSUE.

Byline: Heather MacDonald Staff Writer

SANTA CLARITA - A proposal designed to reduce the amount of chloride in the Santa Clara River could add as much as $430 to residents' yearly sanitation bills.

The Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board is considering whether to require the Valencia and Saugus water reclamation plants to reduce the maximum daily level of chloride in the river to 100 milligrams per liter from the current level of about 168 milligrams per liter.

While water board officials believe the action is necessary to protect strawberry and avocado crops downriver in Ventura County, Los Angeles sanitation district officials and Santa Clarita leaders say the expensive proposal is unnecessary.

It could cost as much as $375 million to desalinate the wastewater discharged into the Santa Clara River - the last natural river in Southern California - through a reverse osmosis process, according to sanitation district officials.

Santa Clarita's two treatment plants would have to be revamped and a 45-mile pipeline built to dump the excess salt in the ocean, officials said. ``That's the worst-case scenario,'' said Jonathan Bishop, chief of the planning section for the water board. ``We'll try everything else first.''

If the 100 milligrams per liter standard is enforced in September, the draft proposal allows water officials five years to study the amount of chloride in the river and its effect on Ventura County crops, Bishop said.

That process may uncover less costly ways to lower the chloride level, Bishop said.

However, the reverse osmosis technology is the only one capable of achieving the 100 milligrams-per-liter standard, said Vicki Conway, head of the treatment monitoring section for Los Angeles sanitation districts.

Sanitation district officials are urging the regional water quality board to conduct the studies first, before voting to enforce the chloride standard, Conway said.

``They are doing it backward,'' Conway said.

The Santa Clarita City Council has vowed to fight the proposal, which it said is not necessary to protect the river and could cost some residents their homes.

``All of the burden for this change should not be placed on the residents of Santa Clarita,'' said Jason Smisko, the city's interim environmental services manager.

Although water with an excess of chloride can lessen the fertility of the land, farmers have not reported any problems with avocado crops, and strawberry growers this week reported a record harvest, according to Ventura County agricultural officials.

Most regions in Southern California have a chloride standard of about 142 milligrams per liter. In addition, salt concentrations in the Santa Clara River have never been as low as 100 milligrams per liter, Conway said.

``One hundred milligrams per liter is completely unrealistic and has no basis in science,'' Conway said.

Most of the chloride in the water system and the river comes from self-regenerating water softeners, which are common in homes, Conway said.

Data collected from 1998 to 2000 showed a trend of higher concentrations of chloride in the Santa Clara River. Recent tests have shown as much as 170 milligrams of chloride per liter, Conway said.

The increase in the amount of chloride is due to the increasing popularity of the water softeners and the beginning of a drought cycle, Conway said.

``It's a compound effect,'' Conway said. ``Eventually, there could be a problem if the amount of chloride continues to increase. But right now, it's an impairment only on paper.''

Water board officials will host a public meeting at 4:30 p.m. Thursday in City Hall's Century Room to discuss a preliminary report on the proposal, which has been under consideration for more than two years.