Santa Monica officials are considering cleanup options ly $120 million for the cleanup.
City attorneys and lawyers who represented them currently are embroiled in a bitter lawsuit over contingency fees owed to the private lawyers.
The situation in North Hollywood, however, seems to be on the mend.
“This work is an excellent example of how working with nature, supporting the cleanup activities of organisms already present, rather than creating artificial systems, was successful,” said Kate Scow, a soil-science professor at the University of California, Davis. Scientists in a lab run by Scow and graduate student Kristin Hicks discovered the microbes strain that eats MTBE, leaving behind only carbon dioxide.
Part of Santa Monica’s settlement with the oil companies is the funding of technology to clean up the wells. Officials are considering their options, which include building a new water-treatment facility or employing microbes.
The contamination in North Hollywood occurred when a fuel station operator leaked thousands of gallons of gasoline in the ground before going out of business. Groundwater MTBE levels were up to 100,000 parts per billion; the acceptable limit for drinking is 5 parts per billion.
Fears that it would spread to wells prompted the Department of Water and Power to shut down two of them.
The oil company Tesoro faced the prospect of buying property in a residential neighborhood and building a water-treatment plant, said Jeffrey Baker, its environmental remediation supervisor. Instead, it sought out Scow and Hicks.
For the past two years, Tesoro has pumped polluted water to two units at a self-storage facility, where the water flows through several chambers containing bacteria and carbon filters. MTBE is below the detectable level of 0.5 parts per billion after several trips through the filters.
This week, Tesoro began reinjecting the water into the aquifer. The new process will save 10 million gallons of water, which is enough to serve 60 families for a year.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on August 8, 2005. Read the original PDF.