Although the United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) is responsible for enforcing water quality laws and regulations, it is allowed to delegate primary responsibility for such enforcement to state agencies. California is one of the states that has been delegated that responsibility. California’s regulations are in Title 22 which parallels the Federal regulations, frequently word for word. Primary states are permitted to strengthen the Federal requirements but are not permitted to weaken them. The state agency empowered with enforcement is the Division of Drinking Water (DDW) which is a division of the State Water Resources Control Board (SWRCB).

The California Institution for Men (CIM) in Chino, CA has its own water system which provides water from onsite wells. CIM has a Water Treatment Plant (WTP) which operates under a DDW permit to treat the well water to make it potable. CIM does not have access to municipal water from the City of Chino. For over a decade CIM has been failing to test the water provided to inmates, staff and visitors according to requirements and has been falsifying required reports to hide their failures.

The DDW maintains databases which contain test results provided by laboratories – the Safe Drinking Water Information System (SDWIS). It supports a public portal allowing access to this data called the California Drinking Water Watch. The CIM data in SDWIS can be accessed at waterboards.ca.gov.

Regulations require an annual report be made to a water system’s consumers. Title 22 § 64481 contains the requirements for the contents of this annual report – the Consumer Confidence Report (CCR). The Federal equivalent of these requirements are In 40 CFR 141 Subpart O—Consumer Confidence Reports beginning at § 141.151.

Title 22 § 64481(c) states “If any of the following are detected, information for each pursuant to subsection (d) shall be included in the Consumer Confidence Report.” Essentially, this means that CIM is required to report the results of detected contaminants-constituents in the CCR if they have tested for them regardless of whether the testing is required or not. There are multiple examples below of CIM’s failure to report detected contaminants-constituents in CCRs, violating the referenced section. Further, Title 22 § 64481(d) (2) D states “the sample result(s) collected at compliance monitoring sampling points … shall be reported …” See the discussions below with respect to the failure of CIM to report trichloropropane (TCP) detections at Granular Activated Carbon (GAC) vessel effluent ports. These samples are required to be collected by the terms of their permit.

Title 22 § 64483 requires CIM, within 3 months of the distribution of the CCR, provide “a certification that the report has been distributed to customers, and that the information is correct and consistent with the compliance monitoring data previously submitted to the State Board.”  [Emphasis added] The Federal equivalent of this requirement is in 40 CFR § 141.155 ‘Report delivery and recordkeeping” paragraph (c).

The California Health and Safety Code (HSC) § 116730 addresses the act of “knowingly” making “any false statement or representation in any application, record, report, or other document submitted, maintained, or used for the purposes of compliance with this chapter.” The Federal equivalent to this section is 18 USC 1001.

A CDCR Public Record ACT (PRA) request (I013405-111423) that included the 216 weekly (Wednesday) Distribution System laboratory reports for samples collected on November 13, 2013 through December 27, 2017 was made on November 14, 2023. It is “In Progress”. These reports have a minimum 10-year retention requirement. Title 22 § 64470, with respect to record retention, requires at (b) (1) “Records of … chemical analyses from at least the most recent 10 years” be retained. CIM initially reported “water staff are currently confirming if we still have records at our archive connex area. Should we find that records have not been purged you will be notified via the PRA Portal.” No records have been provided. The willful destruction (purge) of any record required to be maintained by the California Health and Safety Code is a violation of that code. See HSC § 116730 (a) (3) and the penalties (PLURAL) for the second and subsequent violations are in HSC § 116730 (b). If and when the requested reports are provided, the number of unreported detected contaminants is likely to increase.

Monitoring and reporting failures beginning in 2013 are documented in great detail in the pdf linked below. All the referenced reports and documents were available to DDW. The monitoring and reporting errors described should have been caught and ordered corrected by DDW at the time of the events described.

For example, it took over 5 years for DDW to act with respect to the excessive lead levels at CIM first reported in 2013. Since 2013, inmates, staff and visitors have been subjected to extremely high levels of lead. Those levels were and continue to be greatly above the levels detected in the infamous Flint, Michigan “Lead and Copper Rule” crisis. Lead and lead compounds have been on the list of chemicals known to the State of California to cause reproductive toxicity since February 27,1987. Lead had been on the list of chemicals known to cancer since October 1, 1992. Because of the DDW failure to act in a timely fashion, the water distribution infrastructure has been significantly damaged by corrosion. Steps taken beginning in 2019 to mitigate the lead crisis through corrosion control have been ineffective and exceedances of maximum levels have continued into 2024 when lead was detected at 84.7 parts per billion – more than 5 times the maximum of 15. Documentation of violations issued to CIM with respect to infrastructure deficiencies are available at the waterboards.ca.gov site under “Violations and Enforcement Actions.”

Please read or download the full report of this detailed narrative of CIM and DDW monitoring and reporting failures.