STOP: BURBANK
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SB CUE Where I-5 and CA-170 diverge
NB CUE Olive Ave.

SITE
Former site of Lockheed Aircraft Corporation's Plant B-1
View LANDSAT Map

LOCATION
Adjacent to the I-5, bordered by Victory Place to the east, Empire Avenue to the north, Buena Vista Street to the west and railroad tracks to the south.

THREATS AND CONTAMINANTS
Trichloroethene (TCE) and tetrachloroethene (PCE), volatile organic compound contamination (VOCs), and hexavalent chromium groundwater contamination.

VOICE
Craig Paup and Maria Hall


Lockheed opened a plant in Burbank in the 1930s, and during WWII employed over 80,000 people in producing aircraft there. In 1943 Burbank became home to Lockheed's secret aerospace development facility, formerly codenamed the Skunk Works, which was located at Plant B-1, 2300 Empire Avenue, and covered over 100 acres adjacent to the Bob Hope/Burbank Airport. Lockheed-Martin moved out of Burbank in the early 1990s, but left behind a toxic legacy of its activities, including a plume of contaminated groundwater. The many chemicals improperly disposed of on site over the Skunk Works sixty-year Burbank tenure included solvents TCE and PCE, and hexavalent chromium, a known carcinogen.

The former Lockheed facility is considered a major polluter of the designated San Fernando Valley Superfund Site (Area 1), which defines a four-mile zone of contaminated groundwater. Groundwater monitoring from 1981 to 1987 revealed that approximately fifty percent of the water supply wells in over 5254 acres of the eastern portion of the San Fernando Valley were contaminated. In 1984 TCE and PCE groundwater contamination was discovered in water supply wells in Burbank. The area is part of the San Fernando Valley groundwater basin, an aquifer that had provided drinking water to over 800,000 local residents. Contamination sources at Lockheed included underground storage tanks, sumps, degreasers, and pipes. Exposure to groundwater contaminants can occur through ingesting drinking water, washing or bathing, and through inhalation of VOCs in vapors during showering.

In 1996, thousands of Burbank residents sued Lockheed after learning the company had paid out $66 million in secret settlements to 1,357 residents, and $30 million to workers for illness and loss of property value. In 2002, Lockheed Martin Corp. agreed to pay $1.25 million to settle all outstanding claims by residents who contend that they were sickened by decades of chemical contamination at the site. Besides civil lawsuits, Lockheed has had to pay more than $265 million since the late 1980s to clean up underground drinking water supplies, and they could spend as much as $100 million more in the next two decades.



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