Firms Billed for Water Cleanup : EPA Tells 27 Companies to Provide $71.2 Million

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, acting under the federal Superfund toxic cleanup program, has told 27 Burbank-area companies to pay for a $70-million ground water treatment system to purge Burbank water supply wells of chemical solvents.

The agency wrote letters to the firms that it said should be considered a “formal demand for reimbursement of costs that have been incurred and that are expected to be incurred” in the ground water cleanup.

The five-page letters, mailed Tuesday, gave the companies 120 days to negotiate with the EPA to determine their share of the cleanup bill. The companies were invited to a May 18 meeting at Burbank City Hall to discuss the Superfund cleanup.

The EPA did not cite any evidence linking the companies to ground water contamination, which is sure to be an issue in the negotiations. While many of the companies are thought to have used and perhaps leaked the offending chemicals at some time in the past, only one is a confirmed polluter of ground water, according to state water quality records that are the EPA’s main source of data.

That company is Lockheed Aeronautical Systems Co. of Burbank, whose huge production complex is just uphill from Burbank municipal water supply wells that are contaminated by trichloroethylene, known as TCE, and perchloroethylene, called PCE, suspected cancer-causing solvents.

Lockheed spokesman Ross Hopkins said Wednesday that the company had not received the letter but has been expecting it.

Hopkins said Lockheed “will be participating” in the cleanup work but doesn’t know yet what share the firm is willing to pay.

‘Denying Responsibility’

“Our position is a delicate one, because a lot of these people are denying responsibility and pointing the finger at us,” Hopkins said, referring to the other companies.

Lockheed has already spent $4 million on a system to treat water pumped from beneath its own plant, but the system treats only a fraction of the area’s tainted ground water supply.

The EPA has tentatively approved a $70-million treatment system in the vicinity of Burbank’s municipal water supply wells. The system would include a series of extraction wells and aeration towers to remove the chemicals as vapor. It would handle 12,000 gallons of water a minute, producing enough drinking water to supply 100,000 people.

According to the letters, the EPA also wants the companies to pay $1.2 million it said it has spent on studies and investigation, in addition to the cost of the cleanup system.

A vast area of the San Fernando Valley ground water basin, from North Hollywood east into the Verdugo Mountains, is contaminated by TCE and PCE after decades of widespread use of the chemicals in metal degreasing and dry-cleaning operations.

The pollution has shut down some wells operated by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power and other utilities. The worst contamination is in Burbank, which has temporarily abandoned its ground water supply and increased its reliance on more expensive water from the Metropolitan Water District.

Paula Bisson, Superfund state programs chief for the EPA in San Francisco, said the agency would like the companies “as a whole to come forward and do the cleanup.” If they don’t, she said, the EPA could do the work and go to court to recover the cost, or issue a formal order requiring the work and ask a judge to enforce it.