Saugus Firm Seeks OK to Expand Burning of Explosive Waste

Bermite, a Saugus defense contractor, Monday will ask an air-quality hearing board to renew a variance that would allow it to continue and expand open burning of explosive waste at its manufacturing site.

The board last month denied a similar request by Space Ordnance Systems, a Bermite competitor.

Bermite has applied for an extension of the variance, which expires this month, and has asked for a higher limit on the amounts of explosive waste it can burn at its 1,000-acre site at 22116 W. Soledad Canyon Road. A hearing on the request is scheduled for 10 a.m. at South Coast Air Quality Management District headquarters in El Monte.

The hearing board granted Bermite a variance from district open-burning prohibitions last September, then extended the variance in December and January. The latest extension limited the firm to a single burn of no more than 10 minutes’ duration per week and limited the quantity of burned waste to 265 pounds a week.

No Public Opposition

Citing increased business, the company now is seeking permission to burn or detonate up to 625 pounds of waste a week, an amount that Bermite officials say will pose no air-pollution hazard. “The plume (of smoke) doesn’t really rise above the hills surrounding the burn area,” according to Bermite lawyer Stephen C. Jones, who said the firm has no alternative to open burning.

District staff members, who unsuccessfully opposed the last Bermite variance request, said they also will oppose the new application.

The Bermite application has attracted virtually no public opposition, in contrast with the variance request of Space Ordnance Systems, which last December sought approval to burn a 50-ton stockpile of explosive wastes at a leased site in the desert 25 miles east of Lancaster.

SOS Plan Endorsed

The Space Ordnance plan has been endorsed by state and county health and fire officials and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which said the burn plan is safe and would eliminate a serious fire and explosion hazard at SOS’s two manufacturing plants near Canyon Country, where more than 1,800 drums of explosive waste are stored.

But residents of the Antelope Valley flooded the district with protest letters and 20 to 40 residents made the 200-mile round trip to El Monte on each of the five weekdays the case was heard.

The hearing board denied the Space Ordnance variance request on April 10, but must consider a second application from the firm on May 28.

Pentagon Refusal

Hearing board members did not say if public opinion was a reason for the different rulings in the Bermite and SOS cases. Members said, however, that they agreed with district staff that the problem should be solved by the Defense Department, which disposed of contractor waste until a few years ago. SOS has asked the Defense Department to take the waste but it has refused.

Air-quality district lawyer William Freedman, who has opposed both variance requests, said the two decisions weren’t necessarily at odds given the much larger volume of waste SOS wants to burn.

SOS, a subsidiary of TransTechnology of Sherman Oaks, competes with Bermite in the production of decoy flares, which are used to lead heat-seeking missiles away from fighter planes. Bermite, a division of Whittaker Corp., a Los Angeles-based conglomerate, has about 250 employees, according to Bermite President Douglas B. Moore.

Burning Once Routine

Producers of explosive waste say open burning is the safest and, in most cases, the only way to get rid of the material. In recent years, following the closing of military bases to contractor wastes, several area firms have burned explosive waste more or less routinely under permits or variances from local fire departments or the air-quality district. However, district staff members are trying to crack down on the practice.

Open burning by SOS at its plant sites was stopped by fire and air district officials in 1983, but the firm continued to accumulate more explosive material until late last month. At that time, with no solution to the waste problem in hand, SOS announced the temporary shutdown of operations that produce the explosive waste.