> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.smdp.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Leaving a lasting impression - URL: https://www.smdp.com/leaving-a-lasting-impression/ - Published: 2008-06-03T15:00:00.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-24T19:45:21.000Z - Author: Kevin Herrera - Tags: Business, Santa Monica, #archive-import *Officials say water safe to drink* OLYMPIC BLVD Along this bustling thoroughfare lined with gnarled coral trees, thousands of people pass by the former Paper Mate facility during daily commutes and trips to Bergamot Station or the baseball field at Stewart Street Park, most with no knowledge of the site’s history or the potentially deadly chemicals that now saturate the soil there and have leaked into production wells. The Gillette Company, which purchased Paper Mate in 1955 and opened new pen manufacturing facilities in 1957 on Olympic Boulevard, recently sent out letters to residents in the area informing them about the ongoing soil and groundwater remediation taking place there over the past two years, with work expected to intensify this summer with the construction of soil and groundwa-ter treatment facilities. Solvents, primarily perchloroethylene (PCE), were used at the site and leaked into the soil and groundwater, contaminating a series of wells along Olympic Boulevard’s grassy median. And that’s not all. While much attention has been focused on MTBE contamination at the Arcadia and Charnock well fields and the subsequent lawsuit filed by City Hall against three major oil companies for failing to keep the gasoline additive out of Santa Monica’s largest aquifer, there are other threats to the environment that have city, state and federal officials concerned. They include numerous gas stations where old storage tanks leaked. Then there are the corporations like Boeing and McDonell Douglas, businesses that provided financial stability for many families, but also left behind a legacy of pollution. In all there are roughly 100 sites in Santa Monica where gas storage tanks leaked and chemicals used in manufacturing were released into the air, the soil and groundwa-ter. Aggressive steps are being taken to clean up the mess left behind, with 54 of those sites free from contamination. In the mean-time, residents are forced to pay more for imported water from the Metropolitan Water District, and development, which includes much-needed housing, is put on hold until the area is purified. For a city that prides itself on being sustainable, the inability to use local aquifers is posing a serious problem. In a letter sent to the City Council in January by Mark Gold, executive director of Heal the Bay and the chair of the city’s Task Force on the Environment, he and members of the task force urge the council to be more aggressive in cleaning up groundwater contamination. Gold recognized City Hall’s work with the well fields, but said the remediation of groundwater beneath the Olympic corridor is progressing slowly. “The Sustainable City Plan has a numer-ic target of reducing imported water supply to 30 percent of city water use by 2010,”Gold wrote in the letter. “Currently, over 90 percent of the city’s water supply is imported from MWD. “Moving Santa Monica towards drinking water sustainability was one of the highest priorities in the Sustainable City Plan,” Gold wrote. “Despite the fact that the city has proactively utilized treated runoff to reduce the reliance on imported water, the city has not made significant measurable progress toward meeting the goal of relying on a local, sustainable water supply.” City officials, along with representatives from the state Department of Toxic Substances Control and the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board, said they are on top of it and have been able to close many cases in the last few years. The problem is that the type of contamination found in Santa Monica takes years to remove. That said, the water Santa Monicans are drinking today is safe, said Gil Borboa, water resources manager for City Hall, whose job is to monitor treatment facilities and keep residents informed of water quality. “We have taken all possible steps to ensure that Santa Monica drinking water is always safe to drink and meets the drinking water standards,” Borboa said. “When we find contamination, we move quickly to clean it up accordingly. “It’s hard to say we know all of the issues that are out there, but when we do the city has always been very active in cleaning up and protecting the environment.” City Hall acts as an observer while the Regional Water Quality Control Board, the state Department of Toxic Substances and the Environmental Protection Agency act as the regulatory agencies that impose fines on those companies that fail to comply with state and federal law. Sometimes City Hall is at fault, as is the case with contamination found underneath the Big Blue Bus Maintenance yard on Colorado Avenue in Downtown Santa Monica, or the City Yards, which is located adjacent to Stewart Street Park and Bergamot Station. In both locations underground storage tanks failed. City Hall is actively investigating roughly 28 sites, mostly small ones where a gas station once operated. Many of them were discovered during the ‘90s when underground storage tanks had to be replaced, said Dean Kubani, director of the Environmental Programs Division for City Hall. Kubani is overseeing cleanup of the BBB site and believes it will be free of contaminants within a year. Remediation work has been underway for the last 15 years. “Any kind of industry that stores on site and uses volatile chemicals has the potential to have contaminants on site,” Kubani said, explaining why in a city the size of Santa Monica, there is a high concentration of potentially toxic sites. “Many of these businesses were operating at a time when we knew very little about the potentially damaging effects …. Times have changed.” Awareness seems to have kicked in during the late ‘60s and early ‘70s when Americans saw footage on the evening news of the heavily polluted Cuyahoga River ablaze, or protests by mothers of children living in the Love Canal, a neighborhood in Niagra Falls that sat atop toxic waste. Then there was the work of Rachel Carson, who is credited with helping launch the environmental movement with her book “Silent Spring,” which raised concerns about the widespread use of pesticides. From there, laws were passed to protect public safety, including the Clean Water Act, which celebrates its 35th anniversary this year. As properties were sold, environmental testing was done to determine if the area was contaminated. That is how most toxins are discovered. As more development is directed to the old industrial and light manufacturing corridor of the city, more instances of contamination could be revealed. “The Los Angeles region is historically one of the more industrialized, commercial regions of the state, particularly in areas where you had companies like Lockheed and Boeing, World War II and Cold War-type industries. That is where the problems creep up,” said David Bacharowsky, assistant executive officer of groundwater mediation for the Quality Control Board. As for Gillette, executives with the company said they are using a technique that heats the soil and groundwater to clean up the area. When the soil and groundwater are heated, the toxic vapors are collected and treated. Groundwater treatment facilities will be built this summer and the remediation is expected to take nine months. Making sure the groundwater is free of contaminants could take several more years. The extend of the contamination is not yet known. It is a multi-million dollar clean-up effort, the full cost of which is being borne by Gillette, said Robyn Schroeder, a spokesperson for Gillette. “P&G has a long-standing commitment to environmental responsibility,” Schroeder said. “We are conducting our own investigation to understand the source, location and nature of the chemicals in order to properly design and implement remediation measures. We will continue to invest heavily in our research to understand our responsibility and what action needs to be taken.” *Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on June 3, 2008.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/060308.pdf?ref=smdp.com)