Military Says SOS Waste Fires Could Hinder Tests

In an ironic twist, a Santa Clarita Valley defense contractor’s plan to destroy explosive wastes by open burning in the desert is meeting resistance from a steady customer: the Air Force.

In a letter Thursday to the South Coast Air Quality Management District, officials of the Air Force Flight Test Center at Edwards Air Force Base said they are concerned that smoke from the burning by Space Ordnance Systems could interfere with flight testing, which is conducted within five miles of the proposed burn site in northeastern Los Angeles County.

“We must request that Space Ordnance Systems conduct and file a focused environmental impact report to more fully investigate the potential for adverse impacts to air quality as it affects visibility,” officials at the base near Mojave said in the letter to the air quality district.

Variance Requested

Space Ordnance has asked a district hearing board to grant a variance that would allow it to use the desert site 25 miles east of Lancaster to burn about 1,500 drums of hazardous wastes that are being stored illegally at the firm’s two plants in the Santa Clarita Valley. SOS officials say it would take about 70 days of burning to destroy the material, which they describe as being flammable and explosive but only moderately toxic.

The SOS variance request was scheduled to be heard Thursday by a district hearing board, but at the company’s request the hearing was postponed until Feb. 20 to give the firm more time to sell the plan.

Paul Davis Jr., a resident of El Mirage, a tiny community about five miles east of the proposed burn site, said he does not want the waste problem solved at his town’s expense.

“We have a prevailing westerly wind and we’re concerned about that,” said Davis, who showed up at the hearing to represent the El Mirage Improvement Assn.

“I can sympathize with their problem, but it was run out of Santa Clarita Valley because of the concern of the people, so I don’t know why we would want it in El Mirage,” said Davis, referring to the explosive waste.

SOS, a subsidiary of TransTechnology Corp. of Sherman Oaks, manufactures explosive devices for military and aerospace concerns. The devices include explosive bolts for pilot-ejection systems, and flares that draw heat-seeking missiles away from fighter planes.

The firm has faced legal actions by government agencies and private neighbors since last spring, when environmental officials raided the company’s plants at Mint Canyon and Sand Canyon and alleged numerous hazardous-waste violations. Storage of the explosive wastes without a permit was one of the violations cited.

SOS officials trace part of their hazardous-waste problem to a decision by the Department of Defense to stop taking explosive wastes produced by contractors. SOS used to haul the wastes to Ft. Irwin in San Bernardino County, but the base stopped taking the material in 1980. SOS began burning the wastes at its plants until it was stopped in 1983 by fire and health officials.

SOS officials say that the open burning would generate a small amount of hydrofluoric acid and other contaminants but that the effect on air quality would be minimal. They also say burning represents the only quick way to get rid of such explosive wastes, which no commercial facility will take and which are accumulating at a rate of about one 30-gallon drum per day.

Environmental agencies are divided on the variance request, which is opposed by staff members of the air quality district and supported by the Department of Health Services of both the state and Los Angeles County. Officials with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, who also must approve the plan, say they are waiting for more technical data from SOS.

Bill Freedman, a lawyer with the district, said information presented by SOS suggests that the burning will produce an “incredibly large cloud of smoke” at various times over a 70-day period. He and other district officials also said SOS has not proved that open burning is the only way to get rid of the wastes.