COSTLY CHLORIDE CLEANUP SANITATION BILLS MAY INCREASE TO $480 A YEAR.

Byline: Heather MacDonald Staff Writer

SANTA CLARITA - A proposal designed to lower the amount of chloride in the Santa Clara River could add as much as $480 to residents' yearly sanitation bills.

The Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board is scheduled to vote Jan. 24 on whether to require the Valencia and Saugus water reclamation plants to reduce the maximum level of chloride in the river to about 90 to 100 milligrams per liter from 190 milligrams per liter.

``This is terribly unfair,'' said Santa Clarita Mayor Laurene Weste. ``Some people are going to lose their homes.''

While water board officials believe the new standard is necessary to protect strawberry and avocado crops downriver in Ventura County, Los Angeles sanitation district officials and Santa Clarita leaders say there is no need for such an extravagant solution when no crops have been harmed.

``We'd like to see the water board keep things the way they are,'' said Vicki Conway, head of the treatment plant monitoring section for the sanitation districts. ``The current standard has protected the crops.''

Although water with an excess of chloride can lessen the fertility of the land - which would damage avocado and strawberry yields - farmers reported a bumper crop of avocados and strawberries this year, Conway said.

Runoff from the Saugus and Valencia plants flows into the Santa Clara River and through Ventura County before reaching the Pacific Ocean near Oxnard. Farmers rely on the river as a source of well water.

Water board officials did not return several phone calls Friday. A draft of the new standard is expected to be released in the next few weeks.

It is expected to cost about $375 million to desalinate the waste water discharged into the Santa Clara River, the last live river in Southern California, through a reverse osmosis process, Conway said. Santa Clarita's two treatment plants will have to be revamped and a pipeline built to dump the removed salt into the ocean, she added.

``The data does not support the need for a change in the standard,'' said City Manager George Caravalho. ``This would have a big impact on our residents.''

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

``We've never been able to meet the standard in the past, and won't be able to meet it now without extensive revamping,'' Conway said. ``It is an artificial level.''

The City Council will invite officials from the water board to its Jan. 8 meeting to answer questions and provide answers to residents.

Most of the chloride in the water system, and therefore in the river, comes from self-regenerating water softeners, water officials said.

The water board put off lowering the standard to 100 milligrams per liter in July 2000 after city and sanitation district officials protested and a Ventura County avocado farmer said he used water from the river to directly irrigate his crops.

The water board again delayed changing the standard last December, this time to 143 milligrams per liter, after data collected from 1998 to 2000 showed a trend of higher concentrations of chlorides. The data prompted the board to propose the lower standard of 100 milligrams per liter.

However, Conway said the data do not indicate a problem when taken in their historical context.

``It wasn't a huge jump, and certainly no reason for concern,'' Conway said.