Have I been exposed to contaminated
drinking water from a
Rancho Cordova well?
Most Arden-Cordova system
wells east of Mather Field Road and Paseo Drive
contained some levels of contamination.
The old Citizens Utilities
system, now owned by American States Water Co.,
has traces of perchlorate in its easternmost wells, but
has been largely unaffected
by the contamination.
Perchlorate and then TCE
flowed down Buffalo Creek and the Valley Ditch to
Malaga Way west of Coloma since 1950. If you lived in
Rancho Cordova north
of Coloma Road and east of the High School in the 1970s-1980s,
you were
probably also exposed to higher levels of NDMA than exist
there today, as
the plume from the surface channels has spread out and
been diluted by the
river.
There is a female cancer
cluster statistically significant to the 99th percentile
in
that northern Rancho Cordova census tract. The exposures
to TCE in Rancho
Cordova south of Zinfandel Drive were well-reported in
the newspapers of the
late 1970s, but the perchlorate in the same wells was
not publicized until 1997.
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