An intricate treatment system will be built to remove gasses still present in the soil at the site of a long-ago shuttered Ford Motor Co. facility in Newport Beach.
The treatment facility will remove volatile organic compounds once used to clean metal parts during the Ford Aeronutronics facility’s operation between 1957 and 1993 on 200 acres near Bison Avenue, MacArthur Boulevard, Ford Road and Jamboree Road.
The facility was demolished between 1993 and 1996, and cleanup under the guidance of the Santa Ana Regional Water Quality Control Board was done to remove the chemicals. The area has since been redeveloped with homes.
Now, more sophisticated equipment for testing – and required ongoing monitoring – has found evidence of the volatile organic compounds in the soil and newer more stringent regulatory standards require stepped-up efforts by Ford. Officials with the water board found that the chemicals still present in the form of gasses could be hazardous to nearby residents by impacting the indoor air quality of their homes.
This week, the Newport Beach City Council agreed to issue a temporary permit for the treatment plant, which is expected to be built over the next year.
Several residents in the nearby community – close to Hartford and Country Club drives – raised safety concerns about where the treatment system would vent and objected to the 10-foot-tall building that would house it and took an appeal to the Planning Commission. In June, the commission denied their appeal and this week, the council reviewed the project, including the resident concerns, but agreed unanimously that the cleanup must move forward.
“Mature cities with former aeronautics sites will be dealing with environmental issues for a long time,” Councilmember Will O’Neill said. “Taking steps to remediate can create tough situations. This is a tough situation, but moving forward with the vapor remediation is the right thing to do.”
Ford’s vapor extraction…
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