Identifying Chromium 6 Sites Could Take Months

State water regulators said Thursday that it could take months to identify hundreds of suspected chromium 6 polluters--and up to five years to clean those sites of the suspected carcinogen in soil and water.

“Our ability to do more is limited to our staff availability,” Dennis Dickerson, executive director of the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board, said at a hearing on the issue in Camarillo.

Water officials said they have only two staffers to investigate hundreds of suspected chromium 6 polluters in Los Angeles and Ventura counties.

The board, one of nine statewide, governs drinking water safety. Under state law, it has the power to require chromium 6 testing and, if found, order its removal.

Members said they would ask the state Water Resources Control Board, which sets budgets for the nine local panels, for additional staffing to investigate local polluters.

The six-member Los Angeles board also voted unanimously to convene a special meeting of state and local regulators Nov. 13 to discuss strategies for addressing the problem.

Board Chairman H. David Nahai acknowledged growing public concerns about chromium 6 contamination and said the board must respond.

“If ground water quality is being questioned, it’s our responsibility to find what’s going on and fix it,” Nahai said.

So far, the board’s efforts have been concentrated in the east San Fernando Valley, which was named a federal Superfund site in 1986 because of contamination with the solvents TCE and PCE.

Chromium 6 contamination was detected in the 1990s, and the Environmental Protection Agency gave the regional board $550,000 last year to investigate that problem in the Superfund area.

The board has already targeted 200 industrial sites for investigation in the East Valley. But it says it is investigating other firms around the county for possible chromium 6 pollution, including Barkens Corp., a chrome plater in Compton, and a Xerox Corp. plant in Pomona, because of a record of contamination involving other chemicals.

Chromium 6 polluters include former or current factory sites operated by Lockheed Martin Corp. in Burbank, ITT Industries Inc. in Burbank and Drilube in Glendale, according to board documents.

Saying chromium 6 pollution extends beyond the Valley and Los Angeles County, state Sen. Tom Hayden (D-Los Angeles) called on the Davis administration to take the lead role in the investigation and cleanup.

The regional water board “should be seeking a summit meeting with the state Water Quality Control board, [Department of Health Services] and EPA, and then go to the governor with a game plan about how to deal with chromium 6,” Hayden said.

Board officials did say that as the polluters are identified, they will be forced to clean up their property and, failing that, could be subject to fines.

“If contamination in the soil poses a threat to the ground water, the board will require cleanup,” said Arthur Heath, the panel’s environmental program manager for toxic cleanups.

Heath said cleanups have already begun at a few industrial locations in Los Angeles County, including the Barkens and Xerox sites.

In the next few weeks, water board staff will begin inspecting the 210 potential chromium polluters in the Valley Superfund area, Heath said. They were targeted from among 4,000 Valley companies questioned more than two decades ago by state and federal regulators in the initial Superfund site investigation, he said.

Chromium 6 is considered a carcinogen when inhaled as dust, and a suspected carcinogen in water. It was the chemical at the center of the toxic case in Hinkley, Calif., dramatized in the film “Erin Brockovich.”

The Times reported Aug. 20 that a 1998 recommendation for tougher chromium 6 standards was still being studied by state Department of Health Services officials and that adopting the standard might take five more years.

In response, Gov. Gray Davis signed legislation to accelerate the study of the chromium 6 threat, and Los Angeles city and county officials have taken steps to assess the risk from the chemical in local drinking water wells.

The state does not have a current standard for chromium 6 but instead limits concentrations of total chromium to 50 parts per billion. The state Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment has recommended reducing that to 2.5 parts per billion, which officials say would keep chromium 6 levels below 0.2 ppb.

Tap water tests conducted by Los Angeles County, however, found chromium 6 levels at nearly 8 ppb, prompting the Board of Supervisors this week to call for testing wells that supply the tap water.

According to documents presented to the regional water board Thursday, chromium 6 levels in the soil at the Xerox facility in Pomona reached 3.4 million ppb. At Barkens Corp. in Compton, documents show chromium 6 concentrations in ground water as high as 296,000 ppb. That contaminated water, however, is not pumped for drinking, according to board records.

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Chromium Contamination Sites

The following Los Angeles County sites have chromium 6 contamination and are being cleaned up under the supervision of the Regional Water Quality Control Board.

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Facility City Business Alcoa Composites Los Angeles Door knob manufacturing Anadite South Gate Anodizing chemical milling Barkens Corp. Compton Chrome plating Courtaulds Aerospace Glendale Aerospace Drilube Glendale Metal finishing Former Fairchild Industries Manhattan Aerospace Beach ITT Industries Inc. Burbank Manufacturing Lawrys Los Angeles Chrome plating Lockheed Plant B-1 Burbank Aerospace Former McDonnell Douglas Long Beach Aerospace Menasco Burbank Aerospace Former Voi Shan Redondo Beach Metal plating Xerox Corp. Pomona Printed wire board manufacturing

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Source: L.A. County