SOS Lays Off 150 More as Production of Flares Halts
Space Ordnance Systems continued to lay off employees Friday, bringing to 170 the number of workers idled because of the firm’s inability to dispose of explosive wastes.
About 150 workers were given indefinite layoffs after work Thursday and Friday, according to a spokeswoman for SOS, which operates two plants in the Santa Clarita Valley. Another 20 were furloughed last week by the defense contractor, which is a division of TransTechnology Corp. of Sherman Oaks.
SOS officials said the layoffs resulted from its decision to halt temporarily manufacture of decoy flares, which generates wastes that have embroiled the company in controversy. At least 1,800 drums of the wastes are being stored illegally at the firm’s two plants, and flare production contributes about one more drum a day.
200 Workers Not Affected
Sheila Klein, a TransTechnology spokeswoman, called the layoffs a “very regrettable downside to our very arduous effort to find a solution to this problem.”
Alan Opel, manager of engineering services for SOS, said the partial shutdown has not affected the jobs of at least 200 workers, who make products that do not cause waste-disposal problems.
Opel said the layoffs will delay completion of some existing defense contracts. The flares, which are sold to the U.S. military and foreign governments, are used to draw heat-seeking missiles away from fighter planes.
Pressure From Planners
The company announced its decision to stop making the flares at the April 17 meeting of the Los Angeles County Regional Planning Commission. The move was aimed at heading off a possible decision by the planning commission to revoke the zoning permits that allow the firm to operate its Mint Canyon plant at Agua Dulce and Sand Canyon plant near Canyon Country.
For more than six months, the commission has been considering revocation of the permits because of alleged past mismanagement of toxic wastes by SOS and its continuing storage of explosive wastes without required permits. On several occasions, commissioners have said they would revoke the permits unless SOS found a way to dispose of the growing stockpile of explosive materials. The commission is expected to take up the issue again on Monday.
Disposal Frustrations
SOS officials say they have been unable to find a commercial waste-disposal firm willing to take the flare wastes. And their efforts to enlist the help of the Department of Defense and South Coast Air Quality Management District so far have been unsuccessful.
On April 10, an air-quality district hearing board rejected an SOS request for an interim variance that would have allowed the firm to begin burning the wastes at a leased site in the desert 25 miles east of Lancaster. In denying the request, which was bitterly opposed by Antelope Valley residents, hearing board members said they believed the Department of Defense should dispose of the material at a military base.
But the department has refused to take the wastes, saying it could only do so if there were no alternative. The air-quality district variance, the Department of Defense has said, is such an alternative.
Air-quality district officials said Thursday they are hoping to meet in early May with Department of Defense and SOS representatives to seek an end to the stalemate.
For more than a year, SOS has been under orders from state and county health agencies to dispose of the explosive wastes. The orders were issued after March, 1984, raids at the SOS plants turned up a variety of alleged hazardous-waste violations.
