More than a year after Gardena residents started reporting instances of dirty, foul-smelling water to their local representatives, assemblyman David Hadley (R-Torrance) said he’s still getting complaints about Gardena’s water.
According to the Los Angeles Times on Monday, Hadley told Michael Picker, president of the California Public Utilities Commission, that in the past two weeks alone he received 75 postcards about water.
Gardena Councilman Dan Medina, meanwhile, said the problem with the city’s water dates to 2006, when he started fielding complaints about smelly water. He said those complaints grew worse, citing skin and respiratory problems among the concerns.
Denise Kruger, senior vice president of regulated utilities for Golden State Water Co. of San Dimas, a public utility serving Gardena, said it had not received complaints or any issues for quite some time and that the issue had been fixed.
Golden State Water Co. officials countered Medina’s claims, saying the problem began in late 2014 and worsened at the beginning of 2015, according to company data.
Around that time, videos of black water gushing out of faucets surfaced and began to get media attention. Water Co. officials blamed the problem on sediment that had built up in some of Gardena’s aging pipes.
*This post has been updated to reflect the nature of Kruger’s comments as well as the postcards received by Hadley’s office.