EPA recommends adding Rocketdyne to Superfund list
By Kyle Jorrey kjorrey@theacorn.com

In a letter sent to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, officials from the United States Environmental Protection Agency recommended the Santa Susana Field Laboratory be placed on the Superfund National Priorities List, a designation that would get the federal government involved in the cleanup of the 2,850-acre site in the hills two miles south of Simi Valley.

The news is significant because it marks the first time a federal agency has gone on record stating that the former rocket engine and nuclear reactor testing facility requires the highest standard of decontamination and because the EPA- more than any other agency- has the power to enforce the cleanup order.

"This is a major milestone in the cleanup process," said Simi Valley City Manager Mike Sedell, who's followed the field lab's saga since the 1980s. "And (the city) won't just be standing by, we'll actively be having discussions with government officials to ensure that a decision is made, and we want to see it made expeditiously."

In last Friday's letter to the governor, Wayne Nastri, an EPA regional administrator, states that research on large rocket engines by Rocketdyne and NASA "resulted in extensive chemical contamination of onsite soil and groundwater" at the field lab.

According to the EPA, in 1980 on-site drinking water wells were found to be contaminated with trichloroethylene and were shut down after workers were exposed to TCE at concentrations above federal and state limits.

While the extent of chemical contamination at the field lab has not been fully determined, the EPA estimates more than 500,000 gallons of the toxic solvent permeates the ground beneath the site. TCE can cause serious health problems if breathed or ingested, even in small amounts.

In addition, Nastri's letter reports that "contamination from the site has the potential to impact municipal drinking water supplies in the future."

In an interview this week with the Acorn Newspapers, officials at the EPA's Superfund division said Simi Valley's drinking water could potentially be affected by the leaching of onsite contaminants, but no such determination has yet been made.

"We can't answer that question fully . . . but there is groundwater contamination onsite in a shallow aquifer and the aquifers do interconnect within a certain distance," said Dawn Richmond, Superfund site assessment specialist. "Because of that there is potential to impact drinking water wells in the area, but to the best of my knowledge that has not happened yet."

Richmond said the threat would continue to exist until the site is cleaned up.

Asked why the EPA, which first labeled the field lab a potential hazardous waste site in 1980, has now determined that the site deserved a spot on the Superfund list, Richmond said the possible new designation was a matter of incorporating years of separate site studies into a single document. The EPA completed the seven-month "complete assessment" this year in response to ongoing public and political pressure.

At the conclusion of the assessment, EPA officials determined the site scored close to 28.5 (on a scale of 100) on the Hazardous Rankings System Model- the threshold to qualify for Superfund status. EPA officials won't disclose the site's exact score until they get the go-ahead from the governor.

"We started compiling all existing data and looking at the entire site as a whole, for radiological and chemical contamination . . . and when you look at everything, the score is now around 28.5," Richmond said. "We routinely look at sites that didn't qualify before that haven't had a lot of work continuing on them and see if they qualify now. The score is now at about 28.5 when in the past it was not."

Oversight of the field lab's cleanup now belongs to the state Department of Toxic Substances Control, which under the stipulations of the recently passed Senate Bill 990 was going to ensure Boeing cleaned the site to acceptable community standards before releasing rights to the state for parkland.