PHOENIX (AP) — Contaminated groundwater from a local Superfund site is being cleaned of pollutants at a new treatment facility in Goodyear.
Water is pumped from a well, cleaned inside two water tanks at the Phoenix-Goodyear Airport North Superfund Site, and is spit into a nearby canal at 750 gallons per minute. Treated water is not for drinking; it's being mixed with other water for irrigation.
The treatment is supposed to stop contaminants from flowing any farther north.
When the expansion is stopped, contaminant levels in the 2-square-mile underground plume of water are expected to shrink until the water's chemical levels are safe again.
Polluted groundwater at the Superfund site has been treated since 1994.
The new treatment facility is expected to increase the removal of a dangerous chemical called trichloroethylene by 20 percent. A second treatment facility that goes online in March is expected to further help the removal of the chemical.
Crane Co. paid $1 million for the new treatment facility as part of a formal agreement reached in 2006 between the company and the Environmental Protection Agency.
Crane put chemicals into the ground at the former Unidynamics Phoenix facility in Goodyear, where defense and aerospace component systems were manufactured.
''I hope that the new responsibility that we've seen from this company continues,'' Litchfield Park Mayor Tom Schoaf said Thursday at a celebration for the new treatment facility. ''I hope they'll fund the necessary cleanup of the mess that's been made here.''
The Superfund site was identified in 1983.
