Confer on SOS Problem : Solution to Waste Disposal Eludes Air District, Pentagon

The head of the South Coast Air Quality Management District said a meeting Tuesday with a Pentagon official resulted in a “useful exchange of information,” but did not resolve the question of which agency should help a defense contractor dispose of its large stockpile of explosive waste.

Jeb Stuart, the air district’s executive officer, said the 90-minute meeting with Defense Department environmental chief Carl J. Schafer Jr. left each man with “a better understanding about how the other party felt about the issue.”

Both Stuart and Schafer said, however, that the meeting did not eliminate their disagreement over which agency should bend its rules to enable Space Ordnance Systems, or SOS, to dispose of more than 1,800 drums of explosive waste.

“I don’t think the meeting was designed necessarily for a decision,” Stuart said.

Hearing Set May 28

But Stuart said he will confer with Schafer before May 28, when SOS will try again to convince an air-district hearing board to grant the company an open-burning variance so it can destroy the material in the desert in northeastern Los Angeles County. The hearing board rejected the Santa Clarita Valley company’s request in April, instead suggesting that the military, which formerly took contractor wastes, should do so again.

Schafer, director of environmental policy for the Defense Department, has said the military will not accept the waste. He has joined state and county health officials and the Environmental Protection Agency in endorsing the proposed desert burn.

After the meeting with Stuart, Schafer was scheduled to confer with SOS officials and tour the firm’s Mint Canyon and Sand Canyon plants near Canyon Country, where the explosive wastes are being stored without the required permits.

Visit to Site Planned

Schafer said he would also visit the proposed desert burn site, 25 miles east of Lancaster, to see if it is as remote as supporters of the plan have said.

Ed Camarena, the air district enforcement chief, who also attended the meeting, said a recent survey by an air-district inspector revealed that there are 15 homes within three miles of the burn site and 70 homes within six miles.

The burn plan has been bitterly opposed by area residents, who fear the temporary burn site will become a permanent one if approval is granted.

SOS, a division of TransTechnology Corp. of Sherman Oaks, manufactures decoy flares, bomb-ejection cartridges and other explosive devices for the military and space programs.