EPA Gives 27 Firms Deadline on Water Cleanup Proposal

In a legal game of chicken, federal officials Thursday gave 27 Burbank-area firms and property owners until July 7 to make “a good-faith offer” to undertake a $70-million cleanup of chemically tainted ground water in Burbank or risk a lawsuit.

The government could go to court seeking cleanup costs and treble damages under the federal Superfund law.

A 2 1/2-hour meeting at Burbank City Hall drew about 60 consultants, executives and lawyers for the companies, including one attorney who later said the government’s stance “comes as close as you can to . . . extortion.”

The Environmental Protection Agency has deemed the firms “potentially responsible” for pollution of Burbank water-supply wells because of soil contamination found on their properties. At Thursday’s meeting, EPA and Justice Department lawyers asked the firms to form a single group to negotiate with the EPA and to assume responsibility for building and operating an elaborate ground-water treatment system. The companies would decide among themselves how costs would be split.

Informal Committee

No company committed itself, although an informal committee of lawyers took names and phone numbers to schedule meetings of company representatives.

Nor did federal officials say what they will do about firms that don’t step forward by July.

They said the EPA’s main options would be to compel the work by formal orders, backed by a court decree if necessary, or do the cleanup and later sue the companies for costs and damages.

Federal officials said the list of “potentially responsible” parties is likely to grow in coming months, based on investigations being conducted in the Burbank area by state water quality officials.

The 27 parties include a few individual property owners and companies ranging in size from small to giant. The largest are Allied-Signal’s Bendix division in North Hollywood and Lockheed Aeronautical Systems Co., acknowledged by government officials to be the only confirmed ground-water polluter in the bunch.

A vast area of the San Fernando Valley, stretching from North Hollywood east into the Verdugo Mountains, has been designated for cleanup under the Superfund program. Ground water that provides 15% of Los Angeles’ water has been contaminated.

Wells Shut Down

Wells operated by the cities of Los Angeles, Burbank, Glendale and the Crescenta Valley County Water District are polluted by traces of trichloroethylene, known as TCE, and perchloroethylene, called PCE. These are common solvents believed to raise the risk of cancer if consumed at low levels over many years. The utilities have responded by shutting down the most polluted wells and mixing water from less tainted wells with clean supplies.

The worst pollution is in Burbank, which has shut down all of its municipal wells because of the contamination and is buying more expensive water from the Metropolitan Water District instead.

The EPA has tentatively decided on a treatment system consisting of a series of extraction wells and aeration towers to remove solvents from 12,000 gallons of ground water a minute. The water would then be used for municipal supplies. The system’s estimated price tag is $70 million, and the agency also wants to recover $1.2 million spent on studies and investigation.

But several company lawyers and officials Thursday questioned how EPA can call on them for cleanup funds with scanty evidence.

Dean Calland, a Pittsburgh, Pa., attorney who said his law firm is working on 40 Superfund cases, called the Burbank one “a major case with unusual effects.”

For one thing, there’s “a demonstrated need to clean up the ground water,” whereas the need for cleanup at some Superfund sites is a matter of debate, said Calland, who represents Stainless Steel Products of Burbank in this case.

And the Burbank cleanup “remedy is well ahead of the investigation” of who is responsible, Calland said.

Barry C. Groveman, former chief environmental prosecutor for the Los Angeles district attorney’s office and now a private attorney, put it more harshly after the meeting, making the comment about extortion.

Groveman, representing Adler Screw Products of Burbank and other firms in the group of 27, said the EPA’s case against many of the firms “is based on a hum and a prayer right now.”

‘Quantum Leap’

Groveman said there is “virtually no facility” that has handled chemicals that does not “have some degree of minor soil contamination.” But he said it’s a “quantum leap” from there to pollution of ground water 200 feet below the ground.

“It’s almost an ends-justifies-the-means approach,” said Rich Stadler, a Lockheed spokesman. “I don’t think they care how it gets done, as long as they get results,” Stadler said, referring to federal officials.

But EPA and Justice officials defended naming the firms “potentially responsible” on the basis of soil data.

If companies believe they are innocent, it remains “our burden to establish that anybody is liable,” said Phillip A. Brooks, a trial attorney with the land and natural resources division of the Justice Department. Putting firms on a list of “potentially responsible” parties “is not a statement that we’re prepared to move for summary judgment against all those people in a lawsuit,” he said.

He called on company lawyers and officials to conduct “your own risk assessment” of the likelihood that proof of responsibility will be established.

The meeting began at 10 a.m. Just before 11:30, government officials and the press were asked to leave the Burbank City Council chamber so the firms could discuss forming a group.

About noon, the Lockheed representatives were asked to leave by the others. The meeting broke up just before 1 p.m., with a second closed meeting to be held soon.

A consultant who asked not to be identified predicted that there will not be a single group but “a number of groups formed” of “people that feel they’re in the same boat.”

Lockheed, which is less than a mile from some of the Burbank wells, has already spent $4 million to treat ground water beneath its own plant. Lockheed officials have acknowledged they will have to share in the larger cleanup project.

The approach being taken in Burbank differs from cleanup work being done in North Hollywood.

System Completed

A $2-million pilot aeration treatment system was completed there in March to cleanse 2,000 gallons of tainted water a minute near a complex of Los Angeles Department of Water and Power wells.

The EPA and state Department of Health Services put up the money without investigating who was responsible for the pollution. Jon K. Wactor, EPA assistant regional counsel, said the North Hollywood phase of the investigation will begin “as soon as we have time.”