EPA Forms Agreement With Honeywell To Help Restore Safe Drinking Water
Today, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced an agreement with Honeywell International Inc. that funds construction of groundwater treatment facilities at the San Fernando Valley (Area 1) Superfund site in Los Angeles, California. The treatment facilities, to be built in a section of the Superfund site referred to as the North Hollywood Operable Unit, will help clean up industrial groundwater contamination and allow the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) to use the treated water in its drinking water supply. The EPA reached today’s agreement with Honeywell after more than a decade of negotiation that included extensive consultation and coordination with LADWP.
“Today’s announcement marks major progress on the cleanup of groundwater in the San Fernando Valley,” said EPA Pacific Southwest Regional Administrator Martha Guzman. “This is a key step towards returning the aquifer to use as a drinking water source for the people of Los Angeles.”
The construction of the treatment facilities resulted from a cooperative process among LADWP, EPA, and Honeywell. The parties worked closely to solve complex problems related to the management of groundwater contamination, ensuring that important cleanup work can be completed while, at the same time, allowing Los Angeles to increase the use of its groundwater for delivering safe and critically needed drinking water to the public. The cooperative framework, which included a separate settlement between LADWP and Honeywell in 2019, has laid the foundation for a more coordinated and robust long-term approach to tackling the pollution that has plagued the San Fernando Basin for decades. More broadly, this approach will serve as a template for EPA’s ongoing efforts to protect valuable drinking water resources in Southern California.
Today’s agreement reflects coordinated efforts between LADWP and EPA to hold responsible parties accountable for their historic production of hazardous materials and the resulting groundwater contamination in the San Fernando Basin. Honeywell’s predecessors manufactured and tested aircraft parts and other industrial equipment beginning in the 1940s at a facility in North Hollywood known as the Former Bendix Site. The EPA and the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board determined that operations at several industrial facilities, including operations at the Former Bendix Site, resulted in contamination to the groundwater resources in the area designated by EPA as the North Hollywood Operable Unit.
As part of the agreement between EPA and Honeywell, impacted groundwater will be extracted for treatment and will then be delivered to LADWP for use in its drinking water supply system. This additional supply will help meet the daily water needs of roughly 144,000 residents of the nation’s second largest city.
