[CPEO-BIF] Echo Park Lake and Holloway Cleaners, Eho Park, California

[Lenny Siegel <lsiegel@cpeo.org>]

Echo Park Lake is getting cleaned up but toxic threats will remain

Eastsider (CA)
January 18, 2011


Signs have sprouted around the edges of Echo Park Lake informing 
visitors of an upcoming project to drain and clean up the lake's waters, 
which are contaminated with everything from trash to traces of toxic 
compounds. One of the many challenges to keep those waters clean after 
the $64.7 project is completed are toxic solvents that have over the 
decades seeped into the ground underneath the Holloway Cleaners building 
at the corner of Echo Park Avenue and Sunset Boulevard.  It's been more 
than 20 years since state environmental officials found evidence that 
toxic chemicals commonly used in the dry cleaning business - 
Perchloroethylene (PCE) and Trichloroethylene (TCE) - had contaminated 
the soil and groundwater underneath the three-story building. A plan to 
monitor and deal with that contamination was put in place, and the dry 
cleaners, which has changed hands over the years, now abides by 
hazardous waste disposal practices, according to a city official. But 
the environmental damage had already been done.

In early 2009, more testing discovered that a block-long plume of PCE in 
the groundwater had slowly spread south from the dry cleaners to the 
northern edge of the lake, according to the 478-page environmental 
impact report on the lake rehabilitation project. The report warned:

...

For the entire article, see
http://www.theeastsiderla.com/2011/01/echo-park-lake-is-getting-cleaned-up-but-toxic-threats-will-remain/

--


Lenny Siegel
Executive Director, Center for Public Environmental Oversight
a project of the Pacific Studies Center
278-A Hope St., Mountain View, CA 94041
Voice: 650/961-8918 or 650/969-1545
Fax: 650/961-8918
<lsiegel@cpeo.org>
http://www.cpeo.org



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