SAN GABRIEL VALLEY / COVER STORY : A Brouhaha On Tap : Despite a long fight by Miller Brewing Co., a $25-million project to reclaim water moves closer to reality.

Julie Vitale expressed a common reaction to the thought of her favorite beer being made with treated sewage water. Cocking her head in disbelief, she said, “That’s disgusting!”

When it comes to advertising slogans, there’s little doubt that “made with sewage that has undergone tertiary reclamation” doesn’t have quite the same ring as “Rocky Mountain spring water” or “artesian wells.”

And that, some claim, is why the Miller Brewing Co. has been holding up for a year a $25-million water reclamation project proposed by water district officials.

No, Miller officials respond, they simply think the process is potentially dangerous and requires further research before reclaimed water is allowed to flow through San Gabriel Valley taps, including the 860 million gallons of water that Miller draws each year to make 5 1/2 million gallons of beer at its Irwindale plant.

In a unanimous vote last week, the board of directors for the Upper San Gabriel Valley Municipal Water District approved the environmental impact report for an underground pipeline to transport the reclaimed water from a sewage plant in Whittier to the Santa Fe spreading grounds in Irwindale.

So far, Miller has delayed the project for one year by inundating water district officials with questions they are required to answer about its impact on the environment and the public. But now that the environmental impact report has been approved, the brewer, by far the highest-profile opponent of the project, is left with little recourse but to sue or accept sewage. Company attorneys said they are considering court action.

“We have scientists who say it’s dangerous and they have scientists who say it’s not. It comes to the point of dueling studies,” said Michael Brophy, manager of corporate communications at Miller headquarters in Milwaukee, Wis. “We’re erring on the side of caution.”

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But the region is going to need that water one day, said Jim Goodrich, executive director of the San Gabriel Basin Water Quality Authority, which oversees the cleanup of the basin’s pollutants. “It’s hogwash that this is a health issue,” he said. “Reclaimed water is cleaner than storm water.”

Treated water from the Whittier plant already is pumped into homes in 43 cities, many of them in the southeastern part of the county, where residents have been drinking it for 32 years. The new project is basically just a pipeline to bring the water to consumers farther north.

The Upper San Gabriel Valley Municipal Water District, which serves 1 million residents in 18 valley cities, imports 25% of its water from Northern California and the Colorado River. Valley water officials say that supply will be tougher to count on as authorities in both areas hold on to more water for environmental reasons.

“We need a reliable option locally,” said Bob Berlien, manager of the water district. “There’s no danger now, but we can’t depend on imported water in the future.”

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The issue, Goodrich contends, is emotional, not physical. “Miller is deathly afraid of their corporate image because no one likes the idea of drinking dirty water,” he said.

Brophy retorts that safety is the only issue; the brewery is not concerned, he said, with how customers might view its product if they knew it was made with reclaimed water.

So how would customers view it?

A few Miller drinkers at a bar in Pasadena raised their eyebrows at the thought, but no one said they would switch to another brand.

“I think recycled water is a very good idea, but I don’t want to be a guinea pig,” said Rose Garcia, a 25-year-old Azusa resident, as she gazed at her glass of beer. “I’ll support it if they’re sure it won’t come back to haunt me in 10 years . . . But if this has a negative effect on Miller, they might leave the area. I’m worried about people losing their jobs.”

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The Irwindale plant, one of seven the company operates nationwide, employs 850 workers.

Dr. Forest Tennant, a physician who created the organization Citizens for Clean Water last fall to oppose the water reclamation project, said he worries that other area businesses also would leave in search of new water sources.

Tennant also does not believe that the three-step purification process water officials endorse is foolproof against diseases. “They’ve got to include reverse osmosis before I’ll support it,” he said.

Reverse osmosis, which would cost twice as much as the process water officials propose, does not decontaminate water, according to Earle Hartling, water recycling coordinator at the San Jose Creek Water Reclamation Plant. It dissolves salts. “The only reason Dr. Tennant supports (reverse osmosis) is because it’s costly and people won’t go for it,” he said.

So far, the proposal has not created any storms of protest from other businesses, though at least a few share Miller’s opposition to it. Although no one has put it in writing, about 20 of the 537 business owners in Irwindale have come forward to voice opposition to the project, said Joe DiShanni, executive director of Irwindale’s Chamber of Commerce.

“If anything, reclaimed water will attract businesses,” Berlien said. Whereas the Upper San Gabriel Valley district annually imports water for $235 per acre foot, reclaimed water would cost $200 per acre foot. An acre-foot is an area of land about the size of a football field that extends 1 foot deep, and equals 326,000 gallons of water, or nearly 3.5 million 12-ounce bottles of beer.

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“While our neighbors deal with increasing water costs, we’ll have the stable, cheaper alternative of reclaimed water,” Berlien said. The district will pass on the savings to the water retailers, he said.

The Environmental Protection Agency has endorsed reclaimed water as safe for the public and environment, but Miller wants the opportunity to run its own tests on water samples from the San Jose Creek Water Reclamation Plant in Whittier.

In a battle of conflicting memories, Dan Barthold, a Miller engineer, said district officials agreed to submit water samples to the brewery last summer, but then rescinded.

Berlien rebutted that claim.

“We were more than happy to give them the samples,” Berlien said. “All we asked was that they split them with us, so we could run the same tests on them that they wanted to run. But they refused to do this.”

“That’s not true,” Barthold said. “We are always willing to split samples.”

In any case, Miller has yet to test these samples, a situation that keeps government and brewery officials at an impasse.

The water project would be funded by the money generated from water bills and is expected to take two years to complete. It calls for a nine-mile undergound pipeline that would transport reclaimed water north from the Whittier plant, running along the 605 freeway to the Santa Fe spreading grounds at the intersection of the 210 freeway in Irwindale.

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Before the water is sent through the pipeline, it undergoes tertiary treatment, the highest level of sewage treatment. The San Jose Creek Water Reclamation Plant, which is one of 12 wastewater treatment plants run by the Los Angeles County Sanitation Districts, purifies 30 million gallons of wastewater a day.

“The process is as close to guaranteeing 100% bacteria- and virus-free water as is humanly possible,” said Hartling.

Hartling dipped a test tube into the purified water, which cascaded over a curved wall into yet another tank, and gulped it down. “See, this is safe to drink even before it’s percolated,” he said.

Once piped to the Santa Fe spreading grounds, the water would percolate, or seep, through 240 feet of earth, taking at least 30 days to reach the groundwater table. “This is another filtration system,” Hartling explained.

Over the last 14 years, plant officials have tested monthly for viruses. In 761 samples, which equals 760,000 liters of water, officials found one virus, Hartling said. “That would be about the same you would find in regular old rainwater and even less than what you might find in Colorado River water because of the tourists and other pollutants affecting it,” he said.

Water officials cite a study that found no adverse health effects for residents who have been drinking reclaimed water from the San Jose Creek plant. The 1984 study was conducted by UCLA’s School of Public Health.

“Given the knowledge of the time, it was a first-class study,” Tennant said. “But I don’t know if it applies today. In 1984 we didn’t know about Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Hepatitis C or AIDS.”

The Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta said HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, cannot be contracted from reclaimed water. The virus is extremely fragile outside the human body and dies on contact with chlorine, which is used twice during the reclamation process.

Tennant also expressed concerns that mixing reclaimed water with the badly polluted basin water may create a new strain of health problems. The basin, which is listed by the federal government as one of the most polluted sites in the country, contains volatile organic compounds (VOCs) that can cause cancer and other diseases.

“There’s absolutely no legitimacy to the argument that mixing reclaimed water with VOCs would create something dangerous,” said Goodrich of the Water Quality Authority. “Do you know what was in the basin when UCLA conducted their tests on reclaimed water? VOCs.”

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Ellen Dixon, executive director of El Monte and South El Monte’s Chamber of Commerce, took a tour of the San Jose Creek plant after hearing the conflicting arguments about the process. “When you’re on my side of the fence, you can’t help but be a little skeptical. I worry about anything that is ‘catch-free,’ ” she said. “But I didn’t realize there were so many safety features and quality tests. Now I support reclaimed water.”

Water officials have conducted several tours of the reclamation plant for students and residents, elected officials and members of Citizens for Clean Water. Anyone can call for a tour, but Brophy said his engineers were waiting for a personal invitation. “We have not been told that our engineers can tour the facilities,” he said.

For the past two years, Upper San Gabriel Valley water district customers have financed the $2 million in research and legal fees for the project through a special fee. Preliminary designs have already been completed and, with the approved enviromental impact report, final designs will be finished within a year.

While water district officials hailed the board’s recent decision, calling it a historical moment for the community, they know their battle with the Miller Brewing Co. has just begun.

“We can’t endorse a plan we have concerns about, and we’re not confident in the technology or the testing being conducted,” Brophy said. “That’s the bottom line.”

FYI

Communities served by the Upper San Gabriel Valley Municipal Water District, which proposes to build the pipeline for treated water, are: Arcadia, Azusa, Baldwin Park, Bradbury, Covina, Duarte, El Monte, Glendora, City of Industry, Irwindale, La Puente, Monrovia, Rosemead, San Gabriel, South El Monte, South Pasadena, Temple City, West Covina, and parts of Bassett, Hacienda Heights and Valinda.