The Challenges of Dry Cleaner Contamination - The Sacramento Bee Publishes Exceptional Three-Part Series

An important journalistic and brownfield milestone has occurred! In October, The Sacramento Bee published a three-part series on the environmental and public health threat posed by decades of pollution from dry cleaning chemicals across California. Winefield & Associates wrote the reporter, Mackenzie Shuman, and provided regulatory and scientific solutions to outdated DTSC and Water Board policies. Maybe Ms. Shuman will add a fourth part to the series with W&A’s information.

Here’s a recap of the great articles:

• Their eye-catching titles are “How pollution from dry cleaners left California sitting on cancer-linked ‘time bombs,’” “California’s small dry cleaners face massive bills to clean up toxic chemicals,” and “How can California help clean up thousands of polluted dry cleaning sites?”
• Effective January 1, 2023, PCE can no longer be used in California dry cleaners.
• 75% of dry cleaners create contamination plumes.
• Clean up costs per site range from $1M to $10M with current regulatory policies (W&A contends that these costs could be reduced by at least 50% if the Water Boards and DTSC adopted best science).
• Estimates to clean up all PCE-contaminated dry cleaners in California range anywhere from $7.5 billion to $100 billion.
• Without private investment and at the current rate of state funding, it could take 220 to 2,941 years to fund the necessary remediation.
• Some water purveyors have had to close drinking water wells that have been grossly contaminated by dry cleaner releases.
• Many former dry cleaner buildings sit abandoned due to COVID closures and the fact that investors refuse to tackle the current environmental regulatory policies (W&A contends that these policies were unnecessarily updated between 2019 and 2023).

Download the PDFs below to read the complete articles:

Part 1
File Size:	4032 kb
File Type:	pdf

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Part 2
File Size:	5257 kb
File Type:	pdf

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Part 3
File Size:	4869 kb
File Type:	pdf

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