Fire’s ‘toxic cocktail’ poisoning water
Intense heat released benzene in Paradise; $300M to clean up
The discovery was as surprising as it was ominous.
Weeks after the Camp Fire roared through Butte County last November, devouring entire towns, officials made an alarming find: The Paradise drinking water is now laced with benzene, a volatile compound linked to cancer.
Water officials say they believe the extreme heat of the firestorm created a “toxic cocktail” of gases in burning homes that got sucked into the water pipes when the system depressurized from use by residents and firefighters.
Despite a long history of destructive wildfires sweeping through California, water experts said what happened in Paradise has been detected only once before — during the Tubbs Fire in Santa Rosa last year. The contamination in Paradise, however, is more widespread than anyone could have predicted, they said.
“It is jaw- dropping,” said Dan Newton of the state Water Resources Control Board. “This is such a huge scale. None of us were prepared for this.”
The water contamination represents yet another unexpected and costly headache for
California, a drought-prone state where water is a precious commodity and where seemingly endless natural and human-made disasters are draining resources. So far, the expected cleanup and insurance costs of the Paradise fire exceed $2 billion. Through the Federal Emergency Management Agency, federal taxpayers are expected to pick up the cost of municipal repairs.
Experts who have rushed in to assess the problem say the water district may be able to clean pipes to some homes later this year, but it will take two years and up to $300 million before all hillside residents can safely drink, cook or bathe in the water from their taps.
The health hazard is real, they say. Benzene is both a natural and humanmade compound used as a building block for industrial products such as plastic, lubricants, rubber, detergent and pesticide. It also is found in crude oil, gasoline and cigarette smoke.
It has been connected to various physical ailments, according to federal warnings, including skin and eye irritation, and vomiting from short-term exposure. Long-term exposure has been linked to anemia and leukemia.
One noted water systems engineer said solving the benzene-contamination problem is the most scientifically complex task he has ever seen. The contamination is both in the water, moving around, and in the pores of some pipes.
“You have to be a detective to figure out what is going on,” said environmental engineer Andrew Whelton of Purdue University, who deals with water system emergencies. “They have contaminated water moving around. They have very limited data.”
As climate change makes wildfires bigger and hotter, and as more houses are built in fire zones, water contamination could happen again, some say.
Paradise and Santa Rosa may only be warm-up acts.
For now, the vast majority of Paradise’s former 27,000 residents are gone, forced off the hillside when 90 percent of structures were consumed in the fire. But an estimated 1,500 have moved back in to the few surviving houses.
Water officials have issued them a warning: Do not drink tap water. Do not cook with it. Do not brush your teeth with it or bathe in it. If you shower, use warm water, not hot, and make it quick.
The agency has set up a water distribution center in a local parking lot, giving cases of free bottled water daily to residents.
The task of dealing with most of the contamination falls to a small century-old water company called the Paradise Irrigation District. Run by a board of town residents, it maintains a 172mile system of water mains and service lines, fed by a reservoir on the hill above the town.
Water district chief Kevin Phillips said he and his board knew immediately that they could not handle the problem on their own. His initial reaction when the first water samples came in was blunt: “Holy crap. We need help.”
The irrigation district has called on other water agencies, state water experts, university scientists, lab chemists and the federal government for help.
“We are very good at delivering clean water, but we are not equipped to handle a situation of this magnitude,” Phillips said.
Phillips himself was the agency’s budget officer just a few months ago. He found himself in charge when the previous director quit and left town after the Camp Fire burned his house.
Thirty of the agency’s 36 employees lost their homes to the fire, Phillips said. Nine have quit.
Despite the water issues, the town of Paradise is pushing hard to rebuild.
Hundreds of workers are on the hillside daily carting fire debris away and preparing lots for new houses. The first handful of residents have secured permits in recent weeks to rebuild their houses.
“We’re open for business, and water will not preclude you from getting a building permit and getting back in your home,” said Michael Renner, whose company 4LEAF Inc. is helping the city with the permit process. He pointed out the water district plans to set up clean water tanks for new arrivals until the pipes are cleared for use.
Paradise Mayor Jody Jones, one of the biggest rebuild proponents, hopes to be one of the first displaced residents to return. But, she readily acknowledges the end game: “You can’t have a town without water.”
Each day, crews fan out to about two dozen home sites where they dig up and inspect water meters for damage, check the condition of the service line, and note whether the building is burned or not.
A technician in latex gloves then fills two fourinch vials with water from the line, places them on ice in her truck and drives them at day’s end to a lab in Chico, or hands them to a courier to deliver to more distant labs.
Paradise Irrigation District officials say they have taken some 500 water samples around town, and have found benzene 30 percent of the time. They are testing as well for other volatile compounds.
The average benzene level reading has been 31 parts per billion, Phillips said recently. The highest reading was 923 ppb as of a few weeks ago. That’s far higher than the California maximum allowable level for benzene in drinking water of 1 part per billion. Federally, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency allowable level is 5 parts per billion.
Santa Rosa discovered its problem a month after the fire when a resident of one of the homes that did not burn complained of a foul odor from the tap water. The city has spent $8 million to test and replace pipes and hydrants.
Paradise is dealing with a much broader problem, Burke said. “The burn area was roughly 5 percent of our system. They are looking at 90 percent. I can’t imagine.”
Initially, Paradise Irrigation District officials decided the safest bet would be to build an entirely new system.
That would be a $100 million to $200 million project that could take more than a year and require massive digging up of city streets from the top of the hill on through the lower reaches of town, on the same roads now jammed with debris-hauling trucks, contractor crews and material haulers.
But the Paradise water agency doesn’t have the money to make those repairs. With 90 percent of its customer and revenue base gone, the agency faces insolvency within six months, the agency said in a posting on its website.
It plans to ask the state for a $22 million bailout to continue operations for three years.
Meanwhile, FEMA is expected to pay for most of the emergency repairs, but it has rejected the idea of a new system, Phillips said.