Lockheed and Others Settle Cleanup Action

The Justice Department has approved a nearly $70-million settlement with Lockheed and others over pollution of Burbank ground water, paving the way for a cleanup under the federal Superfund program, federal officials announced Thursday.

The agreement between the Environmental Protection Agency and Lockheed, Weber Aircraft Inc. and the city of Burbank means that construction of a treatment system to purge ground water of chemical solvents can begin by next year, a Burbank official said.

In a prepared statement, Lourdes G. Baird, U.S. Attorney in Los Angeles, described the settlement as “one of the largest . . . obtained” by the EPA and the Justice Department “in a Los Angeles environmental enforcement action in the last five years.”

The announcement was applauded by Fred Lantz, water system manager for Burbank, which in recent years has been forced to idle its municipal wells and rely entirely on more expensive purchased supplies.

‘We’re very pleased to see the clock get started,” Lantz said. “It means we can begin getting back some of our ground water.”

Officials said a final hurdle--a 30-day public comment period--remains before the agreement becomes final. After that, it will be about three more years before the treatment system--intended to purify 12,000 gallons of ground water per minute--is completed by Lockheed, whose Burbank aerospace complex has been blamed for much of the pollution.

The agreement doesn’t cover the full cost of 20 years of cleanup operations, and EPA officials implied that they will take legal action against 29 other Burbank-area companies and landowners that the agency previously identified as potential contributors to the pollution.

“I would say this puts the other . . . parties on notice,” said Virginia Donahue, spokeswoman for the EPA’s San Francisco office.