Firms Linked to Water Pollution at 5 Places in Glendale, Valley

A state investigation of leaking underground tanks has turned up significant ground-water pollution at five sites in Glendale and the San Fernando Valley area, raising concern about possible further contamination of public water wells that supply Glendale and Los Angeles.

“Alarmingly high” concentrations of methylene chloride and trichloroethylene (TCE), both suspected cancer-causing solvents, have been found in ground water at Mepco / Centralab Inc., 4561 Colorado Blvd., which is between the Los Angeles River and the Glendale city line, according to documents on file with the California Regional Water Quality Control Board in Los Angeles.

Close to Contaminated Wells

The site is about a mile from several Los Angeles and Glendale water wells that have been contaminated by trace amounts of chemical pollution, although there is no evidence that any of it came from Centralab.

“We’re just monitoring the situation,” said Glendale’s water services director Michael Hopkins. He said officials are “not overly concerned at this point.”

None of the sites appears to pose an immediate threat to drinking-water quality. But, unless cleaned up, the pollution “would show up eventually at some well sites in the future,” said Laurent McReynolds, an assistant chief engineer with the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power.

McReynolds said he suspects that the sites “are just the tip of the iceberg” and that “there are literally dozens to hundreds of situations like this” in the area that have not yet been fully investigated.

The other four sites:

Technicolor Inc., a film laboratory at 4050 Lankershim Blvd., where ground-water tests have revealed high levels of TCE and perchloroethylene (PCE).

Universal Studios, within a block of Technicolor, where ground-water tests have revealed high concentrations of other industrial solvents and of leaked fuel.

Technicolor and Universal are adjacent to the channel of the Los Angeles River, a largely underground stream that replenishes municipal water-well fields in downstream areas of North Hollywood, Glendale and Los Angeles.

Rockwell International’s Rocketdyne plant at Canoga Avenue and Vanowen Street in Canoga Park, where ground-water pollution was confirmed last year and where recent tests have shown off-site seepage toward the river channel less than a quarter of a mile away.

Riker Laboratories Inc., a pharmaceutical plant in Northridge, where high levels of chloroform, methylene chloride and other chemicals have been found in ground water, some of which has migrated off the site, according to a report last month to the regional water-quality board.

The Los Angeles DWP draws about 15% of the city’s water from wells clustered near Vanowen Street and Tujunga Avenue in North Hollywood, and along the Los Angeles River from North Hollywood past Griffith Park. Water from these wells is served to areas of the city east and south of the Santa Monica Mountains. Glendale draws about 20% of its water supply from ground water.

The Los Angeles well fields and neighboring ones operated by Burbank and Glendale have been named to the state and federal Superfund lists of contaminated sites needing priority attention because of pollution by TCE and PCE. These solvents, widely used in dry cleaning and to degrease metal, are suspected of raising the risk of cancer in persons exposed over long periods.

Since the problem was discovered about six years ago, officials generally have kept tap-water contamination within health guidelines by shutting down the most polluted wells and by mixing water from mildly contaminated wells with clean aqueduct supplies.

For example, four of the nine wells in Glendale’s Grandview field, about a mile north of the Centralab plant, have been closed in recent years because of contamination by TCE. Because of the gradient in the area, water seeping beneath the plant would normally move south, making it unlikely that the Grandview wells would be affected. However, water officials said area ground-water flow can reverse if upstream wells of Glendale, Los Angeles and Burbank are pumped more than downstream ones.

Water officials, pointing out that ground water moves through the soil at no more than a few hundred feet per year, attribute most existing well pollution to events of 10 years ago or earlier. They say that, along with tank leaks, seepage from septic disposal systems, accidental spills, deliberate illegal dumping and leaky landfills probably have contributed.

To head off more pollution, the regional water-quality board two years ago directed some area businesses with aging underground tanks to check them for leaks. Other sites came to the board’s attention through local enforcement of integrity standards for new tanks. At many of these sites, buried tanks have been removed, tainted soil has been cleaned and testing is under way to see if contaminants have reached ground water.

Most Significant Pollution

But ground-water pollution at Centralab and the other four sites is the most significant to be confirmed so far, according to Hank Yacoub, supervising water resources control engineer for the regional board.

At Centralab, a North American Philips Co. subsidiary that manufactures ceramic electric capacitors, ground-water tests have revealed methylene chloride concentrations as high as 5.4 million parts per billion, according to state water-quality files. TCE levels exceeding 200,000 ppb also have turned up in ground-water samples taken by Centralab consultants.

Recommended state health limits for methylene chloride and TCE in drinking water are 40 ppb and 5 ppb, respectively.

However, the tests showed that the worst pollution is confined to a single monitoring well near leaky tanks that are no longer used. In a report filed with the water-quality board, the company said the problem involves “a very small isolated slug” of pollution that has not spread widely over the property, much less migrated off the site.

Pollution Migration

Water-quality officials are not yet certain that no pollution has migrated. Methylene chloride has not been a problem in the Los Angeles and Glendale wells a mile away, water officials from the two cities said.

After some jawboning by officials on the water-quality board, Centralab agreed last month to move quickly to extract and treat the water beneath the plant.

In a letter to the company last month, the regional board’s executive officer, Robert Ghirelli, complained of what he termed Centralab’s “reluctance” to comply with cleanup requests and threatened to seek penalty assessments against the firm for late filing of a cleanup plan.

Deadline ‘Misunderstanding’

Centralab responded later in July that the missed deadline resulted from a “misunderstanding” about the filing schedule and denied that it is dragging its feet.

The company proposed to install two aeration, or air-stripping, towers. The devices would remove chemicals from water through evaporation. The towers will be equipped with filters to keep chemical vapors out of the air. Once the water is clean enough, it will be discharged to city sewers, according to the company’s plan.

At Technicolor, tests have shown a variety of industrial chemicals in ground water near the company’s underground tank storage area. Chemicals found include 1,1,1-trichloroethane (TCA) at levels of up to 53,000 ppb, TCE at levels as high as 4,700 ppb, PCE at up to 2,400 ppb and smaller amounts of vinyl chloride, a carcinogenic compound that can form when TCE breaks down. The recommended health limit for TCA in drinking water is 200 ppb; for PCE, it is 4 ppb.

Added Monitors Planned

At Universal Studios, high levels of the solvents methyl ethyl ketone and acetone have been discovered, along with xylene and toluene from fuel leaks. Universal officials were unavailable for comment last week. But, in reports filed with the regional board, they said they will install more water-monitoring wells and build a ground-water extraction and treatment system once the scope of the pollution is better understood.

Whether pollution from Technicolor or Universal Studios has seeped beneath the river channel a short distance away has not been determined, according to water-quality board files.

Tests of ground water at Riker Laboratories, 19901 Nordhoff St., have revealed high levels of several chemicals, including methylene chloride at up to 9,300 ppb and chloroform, a suspected carcinogen, at much higher levels.

Moreover, tainted ground water has migrated south from the 33-acre site, although the degree of off-site contamination is not known.

Spills, Leaks Blamed

Tom Fine, manufacturing director for the company, said the problem resulted mainly from spills and leaking pipelines rather than from leaking tanks. Nonetheless, he said, the company has taken 10 of its 14 underground tanks out of service and has equipped the other four with leak-detection systems.

When high solvent concentrations were discovered last year in ground water at the Rocketdyne plant, company officials expressed hope that the pollution was confined to the site.

But, in a report to the water-quality board last month, Rocketdyne said it had discovered contamination between the 56-acre plant site and the river channel--although at considerably lower levels than found on site.

For example, tests showed that ground water beneath the site contained TCE concentrations of up to 26,000 ppb. Water drawn from a test well at Vanowen Street and Milwood Avenue near the edge of the channel contained 180 ppb.

Steve Lafflam, an environmental control specialist with Rocketdyne, said the company intends to pump on-site extraction wells to lower the area’s water table, thus reversing the normal gradient that draws ground-water pollution north towards the river. This will pull ground water back to the plant.

“We don’t feel we’ve lost a lot of it,” Lafflam said. Rocketdyne is proposing to treat the ground water with aeration towers and carbon filters.