Cleanup of Canoga Park Site Postponed Again : Pollution: Rockwell Corp. expresses doubt that the tainted ground-water problem will ever be solved.

A long-delayed ground-water cleanup in Canoga Park hit another snag Monday when state officials ordered a study to assure that ground-water pumping will not cause ground subsidence and weaken foundations of nearby buildings.

The study will postpone until at least late spring the start of the cleanup by Rockwell International Corp., whose plan to extract and treat chemically tainted ground water was approved by officials last August.

The new roadblock is “extremely frustrating” to Rockwell, which is “ready to flip the switch,” Rockwell attorney Andrew Lundberg told the Regional Water Quality Control Board at a meeting in downtown Los Angeles.

Because of “Eleventh-hour fine-tuning of this permit on an ongoing basis, we have some doubts” the cleanup will ever be accomplished, Lundberg complained.

Water beneath the Rockwell plant at 6633 Canoga Ave. contains high levels of cleaning solvents, including trichloroethylene and 1,1,1 trichloroethane. Under an order from the regional water board, Rockwell conducted an investigation of leaky tanks and piping and confirmed the presence of contaminants in 1985.

There are no drinking water wells in the area, but ground water seeps northeast from Rockwell’s land to the Los Angeles River, which replenishes municipal well fields about 15 miles downstream.

Under the cleanup plan, Rockwell is to pump and treat 576,000 gallons of ground water per day and initially discharge it into the river channel. Eventually, company officials hope to use the water for cooling or other purposes at their plant to avoid wasting it. Pumping is to continue until solvent levels in ground water fall within drinking water standards, which could take a number of years.

The risk of the ground settling because of large ground-water extraction was first raised by the real estate arm of May Co., part-owner of the Topanga Plaza mall west of the Rockwell plant, is but the latest problem to plague the cleanup, which has also been slowed by a dispute between Rockwell and Montgomery Ward & Co.

Water under the Rockwell plant contains floating gasoline, along with chemical solvents. The firm contends that the gasoline migrated to its property from a nearby Montgomery Ward Auto Service Center and from a former gas station site owned by J. C. Penney.

Water board officials agree that Ward and Penney leaked gasoline, and Penney has agreed to pay Rockwell to remove the gas as part of the cleanup. But Ward has denied responsibility, prompting Rockwell to sue the company last year.

Then, following issuance of the permit to Rockwell to discharge treated water into the river, Ward appealed on grounds it was adversely affected. In the appeal, Ward maintained that it should not be named in the permit as a source of the gasoline. It also wanted the permit to include limits on lowering of the water table as a result of Rockwell’s pumping.

A sharp drop in the water table, Ward maintained, would raise the cost of treating ground water should Ward be ordered to do so in the future.

To keep the appeal from dragging out the cleanup, water board staff members sought to revise the permit to limit drawdown of the water table and take out the language accusing Ward. The board had been scheduled Monday to vote on the revised permit.

Last week, however, ground subsidence fears suddenly were raised by May Co. Water board staff members proposed giving Rockwell until May 6 to prepare a study on the issue.

But Lundberg, calling the issue “a missile that landed this morning,” persuaded the board to back off that deadline and instead allow Rockwell to report to the board in April on the time that such a study would require.

In the meantime, Rockwell will be allowed to do pilot testing of its treatment system.

The Rockwell-Ward battle also will continue. Rockwell contends that Ward knows full well it leaked the gasoline, pointing to internal Ward memos obtained during the legal discovery process.

In a 1987 memo, Ward engineer Charlie West said he was “convinced that we have had gasoline escaping from the tanks” at Ward’s auto service center.

And in a 1988 memo, West said test results leave “no doubt that the gasoline contamination was caused by the tanks at the Montgomery Ward Auto Center and subsequently affected the Rockwell site.”

But in an interview Monday, Ward attorney Larry Straw said the source of the escaped gasoline is still “an open question.” Most likely it came from Rockwell’s own fuel tanks, Straw said.

As for the incriminating remarks of West, Straw said West “is not a hydrologist, he’s not a geologist, he doesn’t have any background in this area.” Rockwell, Straw said, informed West of its conclusions, and “he took what they told him at face value.”