With water safety in question, monitoring program a hit.

Byline: Karen McCowan The Register-Guard

State water officials are making house calls to rural well users this spring as part of a plan to clean up groundwater contamination in the southern Willamette Valley.

Though a relative newcomer to the area, Marla McClean welcomed a checkup of her well water last week by Department of Environmental Quality hydrogeologist Audrey Eldridge and water sampling technician Michael Tichenor. McClean and her husband moved to their home on nearly an acre of land along Beacon Drive, north of Santa Clara, from Winnemucca, Nev., in late 2005.

"The water was so badly contaminated in some hot spots there that the water from some wells was undrinkable," she said. "Ours was not, but we still participated in the monitoring."

Fortunately, her well here showed low levels of the potentially dangerous nitrates that caused the state in 2004 to declare much of the rural land between Eugene and Corvallis a Groundwater Management Area. A task force of local officials and residents studied the problem and concluded last year that no single source was responsible for the contamination, which can come from everything from agricultural runoff to individual septic systems. Accordingly, they adopted a plan designed to reduce the pollution through an array of voluntary actions.

The well-testing program is part of that effort.

"We installed 24 new monitoring wells, but we also wanted to randomly select other wells to see what people might be drinking," Eldridge said.

In a typical 30- to 60-minute house call, Eldridge draws a sample from the well and Tichenor performs some immediate tests in his mobile lab inside a state DEQ van. He measures the water's temperature, pH, dissolved oxygen levels, and conductivity. The remaining part of the sample is kept and stored for possible later testing.

The on-the-scene tests are important, he said, because some elements in the water sample can change rapidly.

Eldridge said her one-on-one work with well users is satisfying.

"I tell everyone that I have the best job in DEQ," she said. Besides providing information on patterns of elevated nitrate concentration, "we're giving people the information to make good decisions about what they're drinking."

While she went into the water protection business hoping to clean up Superfund sites such as New York's infamous Love Canal, Eldridge said she first recognized the importance of the outreach during a public meeting on the Groundwater Management Area in Corvallis two years ago.

"A woman came in with her little baby and said, `I want to show you my miracle child,' ' Eldridge recounted. "At first people thought she was just saying what every new mother says about her baby, but she said, `No - you don't understand. I've had eight miscarriages. This pregnancy, I got rid of my (manure-producing) chickens and put a filtration system in my house. I took care of what I was drinking, and now I have a baby.' '

High nitrate levels pose a health risk to animals and humans, with infants and nursing women particularly vulnerable. Nitrates have been linked to sometimes fatal "blue baby syndrome," and some research also implicates them in spontaneous miscarriages and some cancers.

Five miles north of McClean's home, Dorrance Mattson also welcomed the testing of his well, dug a few years ago after he and his wife became concerned about rising nitrate levels in the shallower well from which they and their family drank for 40 years.

"We heard all the statistics about the health problems, and we were nervous because all the runoff from the Santa Clara septic systems was supposedly draining this way," he said.

Eldridge said DEQ is still adding new wells to its inventory of testing sites. She urged all southern Willamette Valley residents who are on well water to take advantage of free DEQ screening clinics, in which people bring samples of their water for analysis.

ARRANGING A WELL WATER CHECKUP

The DEQ is accepting a few additional wells into its on-site monitoring program. Other well users can bring samples to free screening clinics scheduled throughout the southern Willamette Valley.

Information: Call [phone] or visit www.groundwater.oregonstate.edu/willamette/ events.htm; request information at [e-mail]; or contact Denise Kalakay at 682-7415 or [e-mail]