Hexavalent chromium is terrorizing the San Fernando Valley, in the form of a giant underground plume "moving very slowly, generally downstream toward the Los Angeles River." The Environmental Protection Agency has announced that it will spend $3 million installing about 30 wells in the Valley to monitor chromium-6 (aka hexavalent chromium)--best known as "the metal pollutant that environmental crusader Erin Brockovich famously helped expose in Hinkley," reports the LA Daily News. The new wells will be installed 50 to 200 feet deep on public property with "A dozen wells...installed in Burbank, eight or nine in Glendale and nine or 10 in North Hollywood." There are already "hundreds of other monitoring sites in the eastern San Fernando Valley that measure toxins in groundwater," including trichloroethylene and perchloroethylene--the legacies of the work done by the region's aerospace companies around the middle of the twentieth century (think about that when you go see the Ansel Adams photos on display at drkrm in Downtown this month--Adams was commissioned to shoot the industry's facilities, including ones in Burbank). The EPA plans to release a report by the end of next year showing all the nasty groundwater contamination in the San Fernando Valley. Can't wait.
· EPA to drill 30 new wells in Burbank, Glendale, NoHo for hexavalent chromium monitoring [LADN]
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