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Waste Disposal : SOS Wins Time to Implement 11th-Hour Plan

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Times Staff Writer

For the fifth time in as many months, the county Regional Planning Commission Friday delayed a decision on revoking permits for Space Ordnance Systems in hopes that the embattled company can pull off an 11th-hour plan to dispose of about 1,800 barrels of illegally stored toxic wastes.

SOS officials said they are awaiting word from a North Carolina waste treatment center that “believes it can legally accept and treat the wastes” now stored in barrels.

The board delayed its revocation vote until July 1 and gave SOS until June 10 to submit written proof that it is disposing of the barrels.

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20-Day Wait

David Breier, an attorney for SOS, said the company signed a contract with the North Carolina company Thursday, and now must wait about 20 days while the firm tests the chemical content of the liquid wastes and determines if it can legally handle the job. SOS officials did not name the firm.

If the North Carolina facility can take the barrels, Breier said, it will mean the end of an 18-month, nationwide search for a place to dispose of the explosive wastes, which until 1983 were routinely accepted by military waste dumps.

“We have talked to 40 companies who have claimed an ability to treat the wastes, but this is the first one to come along that we have confidence in,” Breier told the commissioners.

New Proposal

Disposal of the barrels is part of a new proposal revealed Friday for overall cleanup of the SOS sites. The cleanup proposal, which received a mixed response from the commission, would name SOS as the lead agency in cleaning up contaminated ground water and soil at its two explosives manufacturing plants in Sand and Mint canyons in the Santa Clarita Valley.

Confusion reigned at the five-hour hearing Friday--as it has during much of the testimony before the panel since January--largely because the commission has no streamlined method for handling land-use problems involving toxic wastes, and has never dealt with a case similar to the SOS one before.

At one point, commissioners seemed ready to adopt a new proposal by Commissioner George Lefcoe to require SOS to immediately set up a $4-million cleanup trust fund. But a recess was called, and Lefcoe’s proposal was rejected without explanation by all the commissioners except Lefcoe.

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180 Days to Perform

Under Lefcoe’s plan, which SOS attorneys accepted immediately, SOS would have disposed of the barrels and begun cleaning up the soil and contaminated ground water near the plants within 180 days. If the commission had not been satisfied with the company’s progress after 180 days, the county could then have used the $4 million to handle the cleanup itself.

The idea was embraced by Thomas Treinen, whose company, Special Devices, owns one of the plants leased by SOS and other companies. Treinen faces revocation of his land-use permits, which he said would mean “the ruination of my company and myself, probably.”

But, after a recess, the commission returned with the proposal it finally approved--setting June 10 as the deadline for SOS to submit written proof that it is disposing of the barrels.

Creation of Sludge

Breier, the SOS attorney, said the contract SOS has signed with the North Carolina company would cost SOS an estimated $900,000 to $1.5 million. The treatment facility would reduce the liquids to sludge before disposing of them at a waste site in the East, he said.

The barrels probably would be shipped from California by train, he said, and SOS is already seeking transportation permits for the project.

The perplexing problem of disposing of the stockpiled barrels, discovered last year during a raid by county health officials, set off a bitter squabble between the South Coast Air Quality Management District and the Defense Department. The air-quality district has refused to allow SOS to burn the wastes in the desert, and the Defense Department has refused to accept the wastes.

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The two feuding agencies met earlier this week in an attempt to resolve the disposal problem, but neither agency was willing to bend its rules and no agreement was reached.

More than 100 Laid Off

More than 100 people have been laid off at SOS, which had to shut down parts of its operation pending a solution.

Meanwhile, commissioners said they will spend the next weeks perusing a 10-page document submitted by SOS Friday that proposes creating a three-member task force to direct the difficult job of cleaning up and monitoring the two canyon sites.

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