Firm Agrees to Help Pay for Tainted Water Cleanup

The Environmental Protection Agency announced Wednesday that Sacramento-based Aerojet Corp. has agreed to pay $554,000 toward investigation and cleanup of underground water contamination on 120 acres around the firm’s plant in Azusa.

It is the first time any suspected polluter has agreed to help pay for one of the West’s worst underground water contamination problems, said Jeffrey Zelikson, an EPA official in the agency’s San Francisco regional office. Extreme levels of pollution found in 1979 in a drinking water well just south of the plant triggered investigations that revealed widespread pollution throughout the San Gabriel Valley.

In 1984, the entire San Gabriel Basin was put on the Superfund list of national environmental cleanup priorities. Officials have estimated the cleanup could cost hundreds of millions of dollars.