No Impact Study in N. Hollywood : Water Board OKs Aeration Tower

A plan to build a water aeration tower in North Hollywood was approved unanimously Thursday by the Los Angeles Board of Water and Power Commissioners, which rejected a request by some groups that the ground-water cleanup project first be subjected to lengthy environmental studies.

City water officials said the board’s decision means that the $2.5-million tower could be operating by the end of 1987. They said it probably would have been delayed at least a year if the panel had ordered a full environmental-impact report on the tower, which will be built at a Department of Water and Power storage yard at 11845 Vose St., near a series of city water-supply wells that are contaminated by chemical solvents.

Lawsuit Threatened

The vote came after a representative of Citizens for a Better Environment threatened to sue the city if the board failed to order an environmental-impact report, which he said is required under the California Environmental Quality Act.

“Your organization is free to take it to court because it doesn’t solve the entire problems of the world,” board President Jack W. Leeney said in response.

“Is that how the people in this city want to deal with the quality problem in the San Fernando Valley ground-water basin . . . by filing a lot of lawsuits, requiring a lot of environmental impact statements before we can get anything done?”

Traces of industrial solvents, mainly the suspected carcinogens trichloroethylene (TCE) and perchloroethylene (PCE), have been found in water in many of the Valley wells, which furnish about 15% of Los Angeles’ water supply. As a result, the DWP has stopped pumping about a dozen of the most contaminated wells and mixes water from less tainted wells with cleaner aqueduct water to keep the solvent levels within state advisory guidelines.

Will Intercept Tainted Water

But closure of the most polluted wells has caused contaminated ground water under the North Hollywood area to be drawn into the wells that are still being pumped.

The aeration tower is intended to intercept some of the tainted water. Eight shallow collector wells would be drilled in the vicinity of the 48-foot tower to suck up the most contaminated water near the surface. The water will be pumped at a rate of 2,000 gallons a minute to the top of the tower and blasted with air, causing at least 95% of the solvents to evaporate, officials say.

The treated water may still exceed the state health limits for TCE of 5 parts per billion. But under the plan, the water then will be piped to the DWP’s North Hollywood pumping station for blending with clean water before delivery to customers.

Vapors To Be Filtered

At first, several environmental and neighborhood groups opposed the plan because it would have transfered chemical contamination from the ground water to the air. The DWP agreed in May to install carbon filters to capture at least 90% of the vapor emissions.

But representatives of Citizens for a Better Environment and the League of Women Voters argued Thursday that the project still requires full environmental review so other treatment alternatives can be analyzed.

Michael Belliveau, research director for Citizens for a Better Environment, called the aeration tower a “stopgap, partial-containment measure” that will not “significantly reduce public exposure to drinking-water contamination.”

Belliveau called for consideration of such alternatives as carbon filtering of water from each contaminated production well. This, he said, would virtually eliminate the contamination, whereas the aeration tower will merely provide water that is more easily blended.

Belliveau said failure to order an environmental study might lead his group to sue, which he said might increase the DWP’s “public credibility problem around the ground water-contamination issue.”

But DWP staff and board members said the aeration tower is a pilot project that does not preclude other long-term solutions.

Leeney disclosed that the DWP is looking into the possibility of installing carbon-filtration plants for individual production wells at each city reservoir. “These things are all ongoing studies right now,” he said.

“However, we do not have the ability to go out and do all that” immediately, Leeney said.

Board member Walter Zelman said the aeration tower should be built in the meantime because there is “a sore need to begin some project immediately.”

The sources of the ground-water pollution have not been identified, but officials say it may be coming from past waste-dumping or storage-tank leaks in the industrial area ringing the most contaminated wells.

Although the source of the pollution may be in the Valley, the wells actually supply water to customers on the other side of the Santa Monica Mountains.

The DWP still needs a permit from the South Coast Air Quality Management District and the state Department of Health Services before proceeding with the project. Air-district officials have said they expect to issue their permit this summer.