The grant application was submitted two years ago for funding through state Proposition 50 — a $3.34-billion bond passed in 2002 to fund water quality and management projects — and has taken until now to be fully processed.
Due to the amount of national attention given to the research — together with the collaboration of more than a half-dozen local and state government agencies and other stakeholders — produced a general expectation that the grant would be approved, but without a letter of commitment, officials had been cautious about moving forward with the $4.5-million project.
“This does kind of remove any hurdles as far as construction,” said Leighton Fong, a Glendale Water & Power engineer involved with the project.
The letter of commitment means Glendale Water & Power — the lead agency overseeing the research — can begin getting reimbursed for project expenses, he said.
With a major funding hurdle out of the way, project engineers can now focus on finishing the design and construction of the two treatment demonstration facilities — one at the Glendale Water Treatment Plant, the other at a well along the San Fernando Road corridor where chromium 6 levels surpass the state threshold of 50 parts per billion.
Water officials have diluted concentrations of chromium 6, or hexavalent chromium — which has been shown to cause cancer in lab animals — from local wells by blending it with untainted water imported from the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, bringing the overall level down to just 3.5 parts per billion.
But chromium 6-contaminated groundwater in Burbank and North Hollywood continues to move southwest into Glendale, a migration that the state Environmental Protection Agency warns could significantly increase contamination levels here if no action is taken.
