$70-Million Settlement Is Step Toward Water Cleanup : Environment: The agreement with the EPA forces Lockheed and another firm to pay part of the cost of filtering pollutants out of Burbank ground supplies.

The Justice Department has approved a nearly $70-million settlement with Lockheed and others over pollution of Burbank ground water, paving the way for a cleanup under the federal Superfund program, federal officials announced Thursday.

The agreement between the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Lockheed, Weber Aircraft Inc. and the city of Burbank means that construction of a treatment system to purge ground water of chemical solvents can begin by next year, a Burbank official said.

In a prepared statement, Lourdes G. Baird, U.S. attorney in Los Angeles, described the settlement as “one of the largest . . . obtained” by the EPA and the Justice Department “in a Los Angeles environmental enforcement action in the last five years.”

The announcement was applauded by Fred Lantz, water system manager for Burbank, which in recent years has been forced to idle its municipal wells and rely entirely on more expensive purchased supplies.

‘We’re very pleased to see the clock get started,” Lantz said. “It means we can begin getting back some of our ground water.”

Officials said a final hurdle--a 30-day public comment period--remains before the agreement becomes final. After that, it will be about three more years before the treatment system--intended to purify 12,000 gallons of ground water per minute--is completed by Lockheed, whose Burbank aerospace complex has been blamed for much of the pollution.

The agreement does not cover the full cost of 20 years of cleanup operations, and EPA officials implied that they will take legal action against 29 other Burbank-area companies and landowners that the agency previously identified as potential contributors to the pollution.

“I would say this puts the other . . . parties on notice that we haven’t given up on them and we will be coming to them for money,” said Virginia Donahue, spokeswoman for the EPA’s regional office in San Francisco.

Under the agreement, Lockheed, with help from Weber, is to build the treatment system and operate it for two years. Weber is to contribute $3.75 million, and the EPA has estimated Lockheed’s cost at about $62 million. Lockheed officials, who could not be reached for comment Thursday, have said the EPA underestimated Lockheed’s costs by many millions of dollars.

The agreement also requires Burbank to spend about $3.5 million to $4 million to rehabilitate a city reservoir and build other improvements.

It does not determine who will operate the system for its final 18 years and build blending equipment needed to mix the treated water with other supplies. Such blending is required to reduce the ground water’s concentration of nitrates, which are potentially harmful to infants. The EPA may try to force the other 29 companies to pay for these elements of the cleanup.

The main chemical contaminants of Burbank’s ground water are perchloroethylene (PCE) and trichloroethylene (TCE), common solvents used by aerospace companies, auto shops and dry cleaners. Although their toxicity is fairly low, both chemicals are thought to increase the risk of cancer if consumed in drinking water over many years.

A vast area of the San Fernando Valley, stretching east from North Hollywood and Burbank into the Verdugo Mountains, has been designated for Superfund cleanup because of PCE and TCE in ground water.

The Superfund program targets the nation’s worst toxic waste sites for cleanup by those responsible or by the EPA if the polluters cannot be found.