Aerojet Agrees to Toxic Waste Cleanup Project

The Environmental Protection Agency and the Justice Department on Wednesday announced a tentative agreement under which Aerojet-General Corp. would spend up to $82 million to clean up soil and ground-water contamination at one of the firm’s plants in Rancho Cordova, near Sacramento.

Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese III said the proposed settlement was filed simultaneously with a complaint in federal district court in Sacramento. The complaint charged Aerojet and a subsidiary, Cordova Chemical Co., with liability under federal environmental laws for cleaning up an 8,500-acre waste site under the EPA-administered Superfund program.

The settlement is scheduled to receive final court approval after a public-comment period of not less than 120 days, Meese said. The agreement was signed by Aerojet, the federal government and the state of California, which filed its own complaints in both federal and state courts.

EPA officials said the Aerojet agreement is the second largest to date under the Superfund toxic waste cleanup program, exceeded only by an earlier settlement with Westinghouse Inc. to pay up to $100 million for a cleanup at Bloomington, Ind. The Aerojet case is the first in which a company has agreed to clean up an entire site, including ground water, and to pay the state and federal governments for their investigative and oversight costs, officials said.

EPA said Aerojet will first attack contamination flowing into the American River less than a mile from the dump site. Under terms of the agreement, the company must also protect other drinking water supplies and monitor certain wells in the area.

Aerojet designs, develops and produces liquid and solid propellant rocket engines and produces ordnance, pharmaceuticals and agricultural products, the federal complaint said. Cordova had produced pesticides, other chemicals and pharmaceuticals.

The government alleged that the two firms had disposed of dangerous substances through use of ponds, pits, landfills, lagoons, deep injection wells and direct discharge into the ground.

Rita M. Lavelle, director of the Superfund cleanup program in the first years of the Reagan Administration, was communications director for the Sacramento subsidiary of Aerojet General before going to work in Washington. She was convicted of perjury and served 4 1/2 months in prison for lying to Congress about her role in a cleanup case involving Aerojet General and the Stringfellow toxic waste dump in Riverside County.