Clear Water Revival : Burbank Dedicates Treatment Facility That Makes Local Wells Safe Again

Water, water everywhere, but not a drop to drink.

That was the trouble until Burbank officials installed a $1.1-million water-treatment system this month that allows residents to drink from underground city wells that had been contaminated by manufacturers’ pollutants.

“This marks our first step in restoring our water independence,” said Burbank Mayor Robert R. Bowne during a ceremony held Tuesday to dedicate the water-filtering system. “This will provide up to 12% of our water supply.”

Underground wells had provided all of the city’s water until the 1940s and about half of its supply until the early 1980s, said Fred Lantz, Burbank’s water systems manager.

But the discovery of high levels of the solvents tricholoroethene and tetrachloroethene in city water forced Burbank to stop using its 10 water wells and to instead purchase its water from outside suppliers.

Most of the pollutants were dumped over a period of 50 years, and are most concentrated near Lockheed Corp. land near Burbank Airport, Lantz said.

Federal officials have estimated it will cost Lockheed more than $100 million to clean up its share of the ground water pollution.

The city filter system is being used to clean the least contaminated of the city’s wells, so it is less expensive than the method recommended by federal officials to clean up the wells near the Lockheed plant, said Ronald V. Stassi, general manager of public works.

Burbank’s new water treatment--called a granular-activated carbon system--removes pollutants by trapping the harmful chemicals inside microscopic pores that cover tiny grains of carbon, city officials said.

The filtering carbon material, which looks like coarse black sand, is specially treated to create so many minuscule pores that a gram has the same quantity of surface area as a football field, said Pardha Namuduri, a consulting engineer on the project.

Water treated through the system meets all state and federal safety standards, city officials said. The city started sending the filtered water to homes Nov. 2.

Similar systems are in place in Baldwin Park and Northern California, and the city of Redlands is making plans to purchase a larger facility using the same technology, Namuduri said.

The Burbank facility, which consists of four 20-foot-high tanks connected by a maze of pipes, has the capacity to filter 2,000 gallons per minute, roughly 3 million gallons per day, city officials said.

City water worker Xavier Baldwin, trying to create an impromptu demonstration, tapped into the system and ended up with a pitcher of brownish, dirty-looking water--much to the shock of a small tour group.

“Wrong tap,” he explained, and opened a second valve that dispensed clear water.

“Tastes fine,” said Baldwin, after a long drink.