EPA Orders Firms to Share the Cost of Water Cleanup : Burbank: The five companies and a landowner must build a $2.5-million facility to help purify city well supplies contaminated by industrial pollutants.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Friday ordered five firms and a property owner to pay a $2.5-million share of the Superfund cleanup of Burbank’s ground water.

The order was issued to Aeroquip Corp., Janco Corp., Ocean Technology Inc., Sargent Industries, Hydro-Aire Co. and the Antonini Family Trust. The EPA in 1989 had declared them “potentially responsible” for Burbank water pollution because of contaminated soil found on their properties.

The EPA order requires the six parties to design and build a $2.5-million blending facility, EPA spokeswoman Paula Bruin said. The facility is to be operated in tandem with a plant that Lockheed Corp. and Weber Aircraft have agreed to build in cooperation with the city of Burbank to treat contaminated ground water. Lockheed and Weber are blamed by the EPA for most of the pollution. The EPA estimates that the treatment plant to be built by Lockheed and Weber will cost $62 million, but Lockheed says the price tag will be $125 million.

The EPA ordered that work on both projects be completed by March, 1994.

The EPA still is considering action against about 20 other Burbank firms it has deemed “potentially responsible” for Burbank’s ground-water pollution. The city was forced to shut down all its municipal wells in 1989 because of contamination and has been buying more expensive water from the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California instead.

Friday’s EPA order becomes effective April 30. Bruin said the six parties named have until May 10 to submit a plan to comply with the order, under penalty of up to $25,000 a day in fines. The parties cannot appeal to the EPA, but can fight the order in court, she said.

Jeff Zerikson, director of the EPA’s hazardous waste management division, said the six parties were given the opportunity to voluntarily participate in the cleanup, but none did.

“As a result,” he said, “U.S. EPA was forced to issue this enforcement order to have the work performed.”

The EPA “will aggressively pursue parties responsible for contamination,” Zerikson said. “We will use all our enforcement tools against those parties who attempt to avoid paying for their fair share of the cleanup.”

Representatives of the companies named in Friday’s order said they had no comment on the EPA directive.

However, Jim Majewski, president of Ocean Technology Inc., said his company is not responsible for any water contamination. “We just happen to be located near Lockheed,” he said.

Lockheed’s former Burbank production complex has been identified by state and federal environmental officials as a major source of solvents that have polluted Burbank’s ground-water supply. That company announced Monday that it has hired its own environmental services subsidiary, Lockheed Engineering & Sciences Co., to manage its portion of the multimillion-dollar cleanup.

Under Friday’s EPA order, the six parties named are required to design and build a blending plant to reduce nitrate levels in ground water previously treated by the Lockheed facility to remove volatile organic compounds, Bruin said.

The city of Burbank has agreed to operate both the blending and treatment facilities. The treated water will be fed into the city’s existing water supplies for distribution to the public. Water supplies will meet all federal and state drinking water standards, EPA representatives said.

There are four areas designated federal Superfund cleanup sites in the San Fernando Valley. Bruin said the Burbank project addresses ground-water contamination in the North Hollywood Area Superfund site, where hazardous substances, principally industrial solvents used decades ago, have trickled through the soil and into the water supply.