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Home ›› About Speciation ›› Speciation News

California to set hexavalent chromium limit for drinking water supplies

(17.04.2014)

The California Department of Public Health has submitted a final regulation setting a limit of 10 parts per billion for hexavalent chromium in public drinking water supplies.

Background:
Known as chromium 6, the toxic metal species makes its way into groundwater naturally from geological formations or through industrial pollution and can be found in water supplies across the state. Currently, chromium-6 (hexavalent chromium) is regulated under the 50-micrograms per liter (µg/L) primary drinking water standard (maximum contaminant level, MCL) for total chromium. The current federal drinking water standard for total chromium is with 100 ppb even higher. Concerns about chromium-6's potential carcinogenicity when ingested resulted in a state law that requires CDPH to adopt a chromium-6-specific MCL.

The new standard:
The CDPH announced Tuesday that it has submitted a final regulation setting a limit of 10 parts per billion for hexavalent chromium in public drinking water supplies, a level that will require more than 100 water systems to treat their raw water for the contaminant.

If approved as expected by the Office of Administrative Law, the nation's first-ever drinking water standard for hexavalent chromium would take effect July 1. Public health Director Ron Chapman said the limit "will protect public health while taking into consideration economic and technical feasibility as required by law."

The 10 ppb Cr(VI) standard was already proposed last year in August as part of the rulemaking process. CDPH announced the availability of the proposed MCL for public comment and received more than 18,000 comments. The proposed final regulation documents include a summary and response to comments received. It is 500 times greater than a non-enforceable public health goal set earlier by the state Environmental Protection Agency, sparking criticism from environmentalists that the new limit isn't stringent enough.

The "long-delayed action today simply does not provide enough protection for people's health," said Avinash Kar, an attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council, which sued the department to force it to issue a standard. "The department both inflated water treatment costs and underestimated the benefits of a stronger standard."

A number of water districts, on the other hand, complained that the new limit isn't scientifically justified and would be prohibitively expensive to meet.

Rich Atwater, executive director of the Southern California Water Committee, said communities in the Coachella Valley and others across the state with naturally occurring chromium 6 in their aquifers "will be spending an extraordinary amount of local customers' water bills on state-of-the-art new treatment systems."

Los Angeles and other cities already have been treating industrially contaminated groundwater supplies in the San Fernando Valley to a level of 5 ppb of chromium-6, so they will not have to use new treatments to comply with the standard.