TOXICS CLEANUP MAY LAST YEARS HOLCHEM/CHASE SITE NOT A CURRENT THREAT, DTSC SAYS.

Byline: Kerry Cavanaugh Staff Writer

PACOIMA - State toxics officials say it could take more than five years to decontaminate the site of a former chemical storage company located near a residential neighborhood.

Consultants hired by the former Holchem/Chase Chemical Co. will have to vacuum chemical vapors from the soil and treat groundwater tainted with solvents including TCE and PCE, according to the cleanup plan released late Wednesday at a workshop sponsored by the California Department of Toxic Substances Control.

The public has until July 20 to comment on the plan.

At the end of the cleanup, the soil around the site must be safe for residents and groundwater must meet drinking-water standards - which will take many years because the potent chemical plume has spread off the property, officials said.

DTSC officials said the site does not currently pose a risk to neighbors, based on recent analyses, but could threaten groundwater supplies in the future.

``We have actually done soil-gas surveys in the nearby area and we haven't found any contamination of potential concern. The major contamination is under the site - it isn't spread out to the residential area,'' said Sara Amir, DTSC's branch chief of the site mitigation program.

A massive plume of solvents in the aquifer has moved several hundred feet and combined with a plume of contamination from the old Price Pfister site - a cleanup being overseen by the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board.

The companies have disagreed over which is responsible for what pollution.

Meanwhile, neighbors are worried that the regulators are going to sign off on cleanup plans without fully understanding the scope of the groundwater contamination.

Consultants have only recently drilled 300-foot-deep wells to analyze the depth of contamination.

``I think the main concerns are the groundwater and the groundwater cleanup, not only from Holchem but the plume that's coming down from Price Pfister because we've been told that those plumes can merge into one super plume,'' said Lucy Torres, a neighbor and member of Pacoima Beautiful, a neighborhood activist group.

Kerry Cavanaugh, [phone]

kerry.cavanaugh(at)dailynews.com

THE FACTS

The cleanup plan is available for review at the Pacoima Branch Library, 13605 Van Nuys Blvd. Public comment on the project is due by July 20 to Gabriel Farkas, project manager, Department of Toxic Substances Control, 1011 N. Grandview Ave., Glendale 91201 or by e-mail at gfarkas(at)dtsc.ca.gov.

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THE FACTS (see text)

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Former chemical site