Team Finds 155 Safety Violations at Rockwell

A detailed inspection by a “Tiger Team” of U.S. Department of Energy experts has found 155 violations of federal job safety rules at Rockwell International’s Santa Susana Field Laboratory southeast of Simi Valley, the head of the inspection team said Friday.

Almost none of the problems were serious enough to warrant urgent attention, team leader Paul Kearns told a news briefing at the lab in the Simi Hills. However, inspectors did discover faulty electrical installations that “presented an imminent danger” to workers of severe shock or electrocution, he said.

During the four-week-long inspection, the 40-member team also identified a total of 193 environmental, safety and health “findings and concerns”--most of them involving worker safety--at the field lab, where Rockwell operates the Energy Technology Engineering Center under a contract with the Department of Energy.

But Kearns said there were no “Category I” findings of “clear and present” danger that could warrant immediate shutdown of operations.

Tiger teams are groups of Department of Energy inspectors who comb through weapons and research plants operated by the department and its contractors to identify health, safety or environmental problems.

In the environmental area, there were 39 findings at the Santa Susana lab of failure to meet either energy department or other federal or state standards or accepted industry practices. Kearns, repeating previous statements by other investigating agencies, said it appears that the Santa Susana lab poses no health or safety risk to the general public.

But he criticized both Rockwell for lacking “a full appreciation” of the effort needed to meet health and safety goals, and the energy department for not stressing these goals to Rockwell.

The Energy Technology Engineering Center “does not have a formal safety plan that’s been articulated and implemented here,” Kearns said. And oversight by the department’s San Francisco area office “has been deficient in providing guidance to guarantee” safe operations, he said.

“This department put production way ahead of environment, safety and health in the past,” admitted Lawrence A. Weiner, director of the energy department’s office of special projects, who also spoke at the briefing.

Rockwell and officials in the department’s San Francisco area office face a tentative May 31 deadline for filing a plan for improvements.

The field laboratory has come under scrutiny by several state and federal health and environmental agencies because of radioactive and chemical residues in ground water, soil and buildings resulting from 35 years of energy research. Last fall, Rockwell agreed to pay a $280,000 fine stemming from hazardous waste violations noted by the state health department. The Tiger Team assessment, however, appears to be the first to take an in-depth look at job safety conditions.

However, details made available Friday were sketchy. The Tiger Team produced a lengthy draft report, but team leaders said they would not release it until they brief Energy Secretary James D. Watkins and local members of Congress on its contents.

The report will be available at the libraries of Simi Valley and Cal State Northridge no later than April 26, officials said.

The Tiger Team assessment, which began March 18, is the 21st such inspection of atomic weapons and energy research plants operated by the energy department and its contractors. The Tiger teams were established by the department in 1989 in an effort to restore sagging credibility and improve safety and waste management practices within the department complex, which has handled some of the most dangerous substances known to man.

Rockwell officials appeared troubled by the number of deficiencies and the human wave the Tiger Team threw at them. There was more than one inspector for every four employees during the four weeks the team spent at the center, which has about 150 workers.

“Their business is to find things that are wrong,” said Clark Gibbs, general manager of the engineering center. “What they have found will give us a direction for action, probably for the next several years.”

Despite the number of problems noted, the Tiger Team examined only a fraction of a fraction of the Santa Susana site. Most of the 2,668-acre site is devoted to rocket testing, and the Tiger Team stuck to the 290 acres where Rockwell has done energy work for the energy department and its predecessor, the Atomic Energy Commission.

Even within the 290 acres, the Tiger Team inspected only buildings and waste sites owned by the department or used in fulfilling government contracts, combing the 90 acres that compose the Energy Technology Engineering Center, and also examining 15 buildings and sites outside the center.

In the environmental area, the team agreed with findings of other agencies that Rockwell should improve ground water and air quality monitoring at the site.

The “imminent danger” findings involved electrical installations that in one instance were not properly grounded and in another, were not shielded to reduce the risk of severe shock, said Albert D. Morrongiello, a Tiger Team member.

In another instance, Morrongiello said, Rockwell officials were found to be measuring carbon monoxide levels to assure the safety of a work area, when they should have been looking for nitrogen oxides.

It will be up to the energy department itself to follow up on the 155 job safety infractions. The energy technology center is under the department’s nuclear energy arm, which is exempt from enforcement actions by the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration. The department has an agreement with OSHA to enforce its rules.