BURBANK : 2nd Opinion Sought on Lockheed Cleanup

The Burbank City Council has narrowly agreed to hire an out-of-state consulting firm to give the city a second opinion on the merits of Lockheed Corp.’s plans to clean up underground chemical contamination with a system that would shoot toxics into the air.

The council voted 3 to 2 Tuesday, with members Susan Spanos and Robert Bowne dissenting, to hire the Peartree Group of Kansas to study Lockheed’s proposed vapor extraction system (VES), which would be built on land the company owns at Victory Place and the Southern Pacific Railroad tracks.

After a public outcry over fears of cancer risk, Lockheed withdrew its applications for permits to build the system last month, and the council appropriated $50,000 to hire Dames & Moore, a consulting firm from Sacramento, to study the issue.

But a second consultant was picked because many residents said they believed Dames & Moore, which had done consulting work for Lockheed in the past, could not be trusted to give a fully objective appraisal of the project.

“Peartree has no past or present dealings with Lockheed and is known for its aggressiveness,” said Jeff Strobach, one of about 10 residents who urged the council to hire the Kansas firm. “Although (Dames & Moore) state that they have no conflict of interest, they have worked for (Lockheed) in the past on numerous occasions.”

Other residents said they trusted Peartree to act as the “citizens’ advocate” on the issue, pointing to the company’s proposals to study alternative methods to cleaning up toxics in the area.

Bowne and Spanos said they opposed hiring the company because of doubts about its expertise in vapor-extraction technology.

If built, the system--known by many residents as simply the “smokestack”--would force air into the ground, pump it through carbon filters and out an exhaust pipe extending 50 feet skyward.

The process would remove about 2,000 pounds of chemicals per day from the soil, but it would also allow about 40 pounds of cancer-causing chemicals to enter the air each day.

Emissions from the plant would raise the cancer risk from air pollution in Burbank from about 1,300 in 1 million people to about 1,309 in 1 million, according to city reports.