[CPEO-MEF] VOCs, FORMER SITES: Santa Maria Airport, CA

[Lenny Siegel <lsiegel@cpeo.org>]

Major Toxic Contamination Problem at Santa Maria Airport?
County of Santa Barbara, Santa Maria, and Airport Lawyer Up Ahead of Potential Legal Showdown with State Water Regulators 

By Nick Welsh 
Santa Barbara Independent (CA)
March 8, 2023

Santa Barbara County supervisors were urged on Tuesday to join with the Santa Maria Airport Board and the City of Santa Maria in demanding a delay of an anticipated enforcement action in which all three entities would be named to clean up contaminants that have been lurking in the subsurface soil of the Santa Maria Airport for at least the past 42 years. To prevent such an order from being filed by the Regional Water Quality Control Board, the airport has retained the services of political consultant Thomas Widroe and the legal services of Barry Groveman, a legal specialist in the high-stakes field of groundwater contamination, to seek a “pause” from regulators with the state water board. The County of Santa Barbara and the City of Santa Maria have retained independent legal counsel as well for what could become a protracted, financially bruising legal showdown. 

To date, it remains unknown how big an area was contaminated by the toxic compounds, when that happened, what compounds were released, by whom, how far the toxic plume has migrated since it was first brought to the attention of state regulators 42 years ago, and how much it might reasonably cost to clean it all up. The environmental threat was deemed serious enough, however, that one of Santa Maria’s drinking-water wells — located adjacent to the airport property — was shut down in 1985. Other wells might be vulnerable as well. 

…

For the entire article, see
https://www.independent.com/2023/03/08/major-toxic-contamination-problem-at-santa-maria-airport/

—

Lenny Siegel
Executive Director
Center for Public Environmental Oversight
A project of the Pacific Studies Center
LSiegel@cpeo.org
P.O. Box 998, Mountain View, CA 94042
Voice/Fax: 650-961-8918
http://www.cpeo.org
Author: DISTURBING THE WAR: The Inside Story of the Movement to Get Stanford University out of Southeast Asia - 1965–1975 (See http://a3mreunion.org)

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