Burbank Signs Pact on Water Cleanup

The city of Burbank on Tuesday formally signed an agreement that will require Lockheed to pay $80 million to clean up the city’s contaminated ground water under the federal Superfund program.

Under terms of the agreement, Lockheed will help build and operate a plant that will extract and treat 12,000 gallons per minute of contaminated ground water, officials said. The city of Burbank will then treat the discharge at the same plant and feed it into the city’s drinking-water supply.

Burbank will pay $2.5 million to build the plant and Weber Aircraft, named by federal regulators as another potential contributor to ground-water contamination, will put up $3.75 million, officials said.

The agreement marks one of the most significant steps in the effort to clean up chemical contamination that has shut down seven of Burbank’s 10 municipal water wells, authorities said.