Defunct fireworks company ordered to pay for Rialto perchlorate testing

From Riverside’s Press-Enterprise:

Water quality officials on Wednesday ordered a fireworks producer to pay for testing of groundwater on a 160-acre industrial site in Rialto where drinking-water wells have been contaminated with perchlorate.

The Santa Ana Regional Water Quality Control Board issued a letter to the now-defunct Pyrotronics Corp. and its former president, Harry Hescox, to investigate perchlorate levels in ground water near a 12,000-gallon concrete pond where the company dumped the contaminant while making Silver Sunrise, King Kong and other fireworks. Perchlorate is used in fireworks, munitions, rocket fuel and other explosives, and has been found to affect the thyroid gland in high doses.

“There’s been some monitoring right around the pit. We need some further monitoring downstream to figure out how far things have migrated,” said Kurt Berchtold, the regional board’s assistant executive director.

Hescox’s attorney, David Isola, said he had not seen a copy of the order and declined to comment.

The industrial area where Pyrotronics and other companies operated is believed to be the source of the Inland region’s largest uncontrolled plume of perchlorate in a drinking-water supply. The contamination has tainted more than a dozen drinking-water wells that serve Rialto and Colton; some have been closed and treatment systems have been installed on others. The plume stretches seven miles and appears to be headed toward three wells owned by the city of Riverside.

Read the rest of this story from the Press-Enterprise by clicking here.

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