Local News in Brief : John Wayne Airport : Contaminated Water Is Pumped From Site

Crews building a new passenger terminal and parking facilities at John Wayne Airport are using an $80,000 treatment system to pump out contaminated water found beneath the construction site, the manager of the expansion project disclosed Thursday.

Airport project director Richard Begley said the contamination, discovered 6 months ago, does not pose a health threat. But he said the problem has delayed work on an airport bridge by about 4 months.

Begley said they expected to encounter ground water during construction of the $296.6-million project, but the contaminants were a surprise. The toxic chemicals found were trichlorethylene, a known carcinogen, which he said may be leaking from underground tanks at a service station across MacArthur Boulevard, and traces of pesticides believed left behind when the area was farmland.

The pollutants were discovered in routine test wells dug in the area as part of the expansion project, Begley said. The county’s lawyers have not decided what to do about the possible leakage from the service station, he added.

The owner-manager of the Chevron dealership, Randy Johnson, could not be reached for comment Thursday afternoon.

Kurt Berchtold, supervising engineer for the Santa Ana Regional Water Quality Control Board, said the county has complied with the agency’s Sept. 9 cleanup order. He said the public was not at risk because the ground water at the site does not feed into area drinking water supplies.