Rushed to judgment: Water board names new TCE source near SLO Airport; previously accused family demands exoneration 

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Over the past four years, San Luis Obispo County resident Janice Noll and her family wore the odious label of "TCE polluter" in their rural neighborhood south of the SLO Airport.

Each month since 2020, they've gone door-to-door to their neighbors on Buckley Road to change the water filters that are protecting them against trichloroethylene (TCE), a cancer-causing chemical—at a cost of $50,000 per year.

The Nolls are obeying orders from the Central Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board, which in 2019 named the family's longtime thread-rolling shop, Noll Inc., as the culprit in a TCE spill that poisoned more than a dozen wells in the area.

"When you're given an order like that, you do feel criminalistic in a sense. Because the neighbors ... they look at me like, 'Look what you did to my water.' It's horrible," Noll told New Times. "I think the community trusts the [water] board and the government. So once you put your trust in them, and they say that this person is the responsible party, then you believe that."

From the outset of the TCE investigation, the Nolls denied ever using the now-banned degreaser for their thread-rolling, and they pleaded with the water board to investigate evidence that suggested a different source. But in 2019, TCE concentration levels were highest in the water under their property, and a cleanup and abatement order went into effect against the Nolls.

"It's stressful. It's frustrating. It's all the words anybody that's accused of something that they didn't do [feels]," Noll said. "You have all those emotions that go with it, until you prove yourself innocent."

After four years as the named culprit and spending upward of $200,000 complying with the water board's order, the Nolls may soon be able to shed the label that's plagued them.

On April 14, the Central Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board issued a new draft TCE cleanup and abatement order against a property that neighbors the Nolls'—a former geotechnical laboratory at 795 Buckley Road that allegedly used and stored TCE in large steel drums.

The draft order, which is open for public comment through May 15, states that a company called Central Coast Laboratories (later renamed Pacific GeoScience Inc.) used TCE to dissolve asphalt before it was likely discharged into the environment via a septic tank. The property also had a fire in 1981 that could have led to a spill, and the former owner stored an airplane there at a time when TCE was commonly used for aircraft maintenance, according to the order.

The water board's newly presented case against the neighbor doesn't surprise Noll one bit: Her family tried desperately to get the water board to investigate the lab before the agency cemented its order against them in 2019.

And despite the latest draft order, which won't become final for several months, the state has yet to dismiss the order against the Nolls—which means they're still on the hook to furnish clean water to the neighborhood.

"The hard part for me right now is the board has known now for almost a year and a half who the new responsible parties are and they haven't rescinded my order," Noll said. "Why does it take so long? Why do I have to foot the bill? Every month I have to bleed more money to change those filters, and that's not right."

Premature order?

One of the Nolls' core contentions with the water board is that it ignored their attempts in 2019 to demonstrate that the TCE investigation had a key missing puzzle piece: 795 Buckley.

In late 2019, Noll Inc. attorneys deposed a former employee and owner of Central Coast Laboratories, who testified that the company used TCE in large quantities as part of its operations in the 1970s and 1980s. But that deposition did not change the agency's path on the Nolls.

"We provided them information on our neighbors, and they just didn't investigate enough to find the data," Noll said.

According to a senior Central Coast water board official, the state started investigating 795 Buckley as a potential TCE source after the SLO Airport ran tests in 2020 that detected TCE at high levels in the soil vapor near the former lab.

More robust testing at the site completed in 2022 found TCE under 795 Buckley at concentrations higher than what was found below the Nolls' property on Thread Lane—measuring in at 174 times the federal drinking water standard.

"The new investigation data, which was produced starting in 2020 through 2022, show that 795 Buckley Road is a source of TCE," Greg Bishop, a senior engineering geologist for the water board, told New Times by email.

The new draft order issued by the water board on April 14 asserts that the TCE spill from the lab's septic tank likely "migrated" to the Nolls' property by way of groundwater flow, which is the theory that the Nolls and their consultants argued from the outset.

"We did everything we needed to do," Noll said.

John Coakley, the current property owner at 795 Buckley Road, did not respond to a New Times request for comment before press time.

In limbo

The Nolls want the water board to rescind its 2019 cleanup and abatement order immediately in light of the evidence, but that's not going to happen, according to Bishop.

"There are complicating factors related [to the Noll property]," Bishop wrote by email.

Bishop listed three reasons for the agency's continued scrutiny of the Nolls: that their shop used TCA, a common TCE replacement, which indicates that "Noll Inc.'s operations had a need for a product like TCE"; that Noll Inc. told the water board "verbally" in 2019 that TCE had been used "for cleaning office equipment" on-site; and that other chemicals, DCE and PCE, were detected below their property.

He confirmed that the water board is considering and taking public comment on the request to rescind the Nolls' order, and will evaluate that alongside the draft cleanup order against 795 Buckley.

In Noll's view, that's just an excuse to require her family to continue footing the bill for something they didn't do.

"The board wants to do this simultaneously because who's going to take care of the filters when the new parties haven't been ordered yet? If they release me, who's going to take care of that?" Noll said. "But that's still not my bill. That's not my responsibility."

Noll added that Noll Inc., which her father started in the early '60s and is still in business today, never used TCE and the substance is not listed in any company manifests. She insisted that they are not responsible for the 1.6-square-mile plume of pollution.

The family also has no simple recourse to recover the funds they've spent on the order for the past four years, she said. They could attempt to take it out of the newly ordered parties in a court case, but Noll said, "I'm not sure that's what we want to do."

Bishop confirmed that the water board has no role in making the Nolls whole, writing that "any claims between private parties will need to be resolved privately."

Until the agency rescinds her order, Noll isn't taking anything for granted. She called any hope in the regulator "false hope."

"I have no trust, no vote of confidence in the board, unfortunately. I'm not here to rip them, but that's my experience," she said. "To add to it, we've sat here now for over a year, waiting, with no answers." Δ

Assistant Editor Peter Johnson can be reached at [email protected].