Lockheed Vows to Remove Scrap Heap, Leaking Tank

A long-buried World War II scrap heap and a tiny underground chemical tank, which may be to blame for groundwater contamination in Burbank and North Hollywood, will be removed, Lockheed officials said Friday.

The 40-year-old, covered-over junk pile may be leaking paint sludge and other pollutants into the underground water table, officials said. A cleaning solvent containing suspected carcinogens may be seeping into the ground from a hole in the side of the concrete tank, they said.

The cleanup plan was spelled out Friday for a state regulatory agency and several cities downstream from the Lockheed plant.

Officials at Lockheed Aeronautical Systems Co. said the project is the first phase of a long-range “remedial-action plan” aimed at helping decontaminate nearby public drinking-water wells containing traces of chemicals.

Lockheed officials had promised last month to remove the concrete tank, which is beneath a manufacturing building at the corner of Buena Vista Street and Empire Avenue near the Burbank Airport.

The tank, about four times the size of a bathtub, is one of about 150 chemical holding chambers scattered around the 59-year-old Lockheed plant, company spokesman Jim Ragsdale said.

“It was found to have a baseball-size hole in its side,” Ragsdale said. “It has been in use since the early 1950s. Solvents kept in it would include trichloroethylene.”

That is a common industrial solvent now thought to cause cancer. Test wells drilled in the vicinity of the tank have detected about 320 times the state limit for trichloroethylene in drinking water. That level is 4 parts per billion.

The scrap heap is a 34-foot-deep dumping ground used during Lockheed’s busy wartime manufacturing period in the 1940s. Construction debris, discarded equipment and rubbish from fighter-plane assembly lines were buried there, officials said.

Company administrators suspect that paint sludge, some heavy metals and petroleum products may also be covered over at the site, between two buildings near the company’s eastern property line near Victory Place.

Although Lockheed believes that the buried wastes are non-hazardous, the company will excavate 4,200 cubic yards of the dump to make sure, company officials told the state’s Regional Water Quality Control Board on Friday.

Special Filters

Hank Yacoub, supervising engineer for the board, said Lockheed will pump contaminated groundwater from beneath the leaking concrete tank and use special filters to remove contaminants.

The company will also use air-scrubber filters to avoid contaminating the air during the cleanup, Yacoub said. That will enable Lockheed to immediately begin work without having to wait up to six months for a permit from state air-quality officials.

Lockheed’s cleanup plan was praised Friday by Burbank Mayor Michael Hastings. Seven of the city’s 10 wells have been shut down because of high concentrations of pollutants.

“They could have turned around and stared us in the face and said, ‘Sue us,’ ” Hastings said. “We feel they are working very hard to resolve the problem.”

Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley has not had a chance to analyze the cleanup plan, a spokesman said. City Councilman Marvin Braude, who heads the Los Angeles council’s Energy and Natural Resources Committee, said he also had not had time to study it.

E. L. Graham, general manager of Lockheed’s Burbank plant, said his company’s position on further cleanup of Burbank wells will be provided Sept. 30 to the water quality board.