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LOS ANGELES — Industrial runoff water with dangerously high levels of chromium 6 was discharged for two decades into storm drains that flowed to the Los Angeles River, it was reported Monday. 

Newly released city records provide the first clear evidence of how the chromium 6 used by local industries during the Cold War may have led to today’s ground water contamination, the Los Angeles Times reported. Chromium 6, which is suspected of causing cancer and other illnesses, appeared in industrial runoff between 1945 and the mid-1960s in concentrations as high as 80,000 parts per billion, according to the records. Health experts consider any chromium 6 concentration in the thousands of parts per billion in surface water to be dangerous. The records were compiled by the city of Los Angeles as part of a pollution study but were not made public. They were unearthed by Mel Blevins, a court-appointed water master who oversees the upper Los Angeles River area, and he provided them to the Times. 

Blevins said some of the runoff probably seeped into the San Fernando Valley aquifer and contaminated ground water pumped by Los Angeles and other cities for drinking water. 

“What it means to me is surface water had the opportunity to percolate down into the ground water,” he said. “That pollution is some of the main sources of the problem we’re seeing today.” 

The new information comes amid a fierce debate about the safety of some local cities’ water supplies and the potential costs and benefits of tighter standards for chromium in drinking water. 

The debate has acquired a high profile thanks in part to the recent Julia Roberts film “Erin Brockovich,” about a 1996 case in which residents of the California desert town of Hinkley won a $333-million settlement from Pacific Gas & Electric when its tanks leaked high concentrations of chromium 6 into ground water. 

The cities of Los Angeles, Burbank and Glendale are in talks to jointly hire consultants to develop technology that would reduce the chemical in ground water, and Gov. Gray Davis signed legislation last month requiring state health officials to report by Jan. 1, 2002, on the risk posed by chromium 6. 

Officials say tap water pumped from the San Fernando Valley basin today is safe because wells are closed when chemicals exceed prudent limits. Water pumped from San Fernando Valley wells makes up about 15 percent of Los Angeles’ water supplies. 

Decades of industrial pollution — much of it from aerospace manufacturing — turned the San Fernando Valley aquifer into a federal Superfund site. Chemical contamination in water wells remains an issue for area residents who say they were sickened by drinking poisoned water, and has led to thousands of lawsuits against area companies including Lockheed Martin Corp., which has paid $60 million to date to settle claims but has not admitted liability.