A candidate for [Signal Hill] City Council spoke at the Feb. 15, 2011 [Council] meeting regarding water quality and claimed levels of arsenic above the legal limit have been found in Signal Hill drinking water. Unfortunately, this person did not provide all of the information in the report he was citing from. If he had, he would have disclosed that the report does not differentiate between tests done on water before it is treated versus tests done on water after it is treated by our water department.
Our water is treated prior to delivering it to our consumers, to ensure our water quality meets or exceeds both state and federal water-quality standards. He would have disclosed that the EPA website shows NO health-based violations or monitoring/reporting violation for our city in the past 10 years. Perhaps he should have looked at our “City of Signal Hill Consumer Confidence Report,” which is published every year and made part of the City Views newsletter, and informed the public that in 2009 testing on all substances found in our water, including arsenic, show we are well below the legal limit. In fact, our average for arsenic is less than half of the legal limit. Common sense will tell you that it would be impossible to find any ground water or surface water source in California that is free of chemicals. The important question to ask is whether our water department is treating our water effectively to make it safe to drink. When you look at ALL the data, the answer to that question is a resounding “yes.”
Tim Williamson
Science Education Lecturer
CSULB
