Lab Detonated Wastes for Years, Records Show : Rockwell: Government agencies did not object until 1989 to a routine disposal practice of almost 30 years.

Rockwell International, which government investigators have said might have been illegally disposing of explosive waste when two scientists were killed last year, had a nearly 30-year history of destroying explosive waste by blowing it up without opposition from government agencies, state records show.

Open burning and detonation were so routine at Rockwell’s Santa Susana Field Laboratory that the company explained how to do it in a safety manual.

After regulators ordered an end to the practice in 1989 out of concern for air and ground-water pollution, the company applied for a permit to continue on-site burning in a thermal destruction unit. Rockwell withdrew the application in 1990 and later ran afoul of state toxic-waste regulators, who cited the company for continuing to blow up explosive wastes mixed with solvents and for improperly storing excess propellant.

Executives with Rockwell’s Rocketdyne division said that company physicists Otto K. Heiney and Larry A. Pugh were conducting a scientific experiment--not destroying waste--when they were killed in a blast last summer at the Santa Susana lab west of Chatsworth. Federal criminal investigators are looking into whether the tests may have been a cover for illicit waste disposal.

From public records and interviews, this much is clear: Disposal of explosive waste had become a chronic headache for the company in the years leading up to the disaster. At the time of the accident, Rocketdyne had accumulated an explosives stockpile of nearly 7,000 pounds, according to state records, and was canvassing the country’s explosive-waste disposal services for a way to get rid of it, people in the industry say.

Disposing of explosive waste by blowing it up is certainly as old as the business of making rockets. State documents indicate that propellant and other explosives were being detonated or burned at Santa Susana by the early 1960s. Burning was common throughout the defense and aerospace industries, and the practice was defended as safer than transporting explosive wastes on streets and highways.

But increasing environmental oversight put an end to the old way of doing things.

“As the years have gone by, there are fewer and fewer places where this material can go where it can be taken safely,” said Florence Gharibian of the state Department of Toxic Substances Control. “And as it gets older and older it becomes less and less likely that it can be put to any beneficial use. So these contractors find themselves in a dilemma.”

The “burn pit,” as the disposal area was called, was created in 1958, according to a history of the site provided by Rockwell to the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Board.

Propellant waste was destroyed there beginning in the early 1960s, and the site was used to blow up wastes ranging from soiled gloves and paper towels to unused rocket fuel through 1990, according to state and company documents.

In 1974, the company sought and received permission from Ventura County authorities to burn waste on specified days. The company cited its agreement with Ventura County years later when it tried to convince state regulators that on-site disposal of explosives was legal and should be allowed to continue.

But in 1989 the state ordered an end to open burning. Rocketdyne applied for a permit to continue burning in a thermal treatment unit in May, 1990, but withdrew the application in November of that year.

“We decided not to seek a permit for on-site disposal because shipment to permitted, off-site facilities was more practical,” the company told The Times in a written statement Friday.

Burning continued through the fall of 1990, however, and the state accused the company of also blowing up solvents with explosive wastes. The state cited these explosions in a broader hazardous-waste lawsuit against Rockwell that was settled in 1992 for about $650,000.

Since then, there has been no indication that the burns continued, said Carla Slepak, the state toxics official responsible for permits at the Santa Susana site.

But the deaths of Pugh and Heiney on July 26, 1994, have raised questions.

The company said the men were killed during a test of “overpressure” waves emitted when different chemical mixtures explode.

According to reports on the accident, the men placed sawdust in an aluminum pan and then added nitrocellulose, gycidyl azide polymer and triamino guanidine nitrate, which they detonated from a safe area with a remotely controlled electric match. They were mixing another batch when the pan blew up.

But the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health (Cal/OSHA), in a report on the incident, said the procedure “did not resemble a typical test series for determining air overpressure from a detonation of propellant or explosives.” Further, the report said, “the manner in which the tests were set up and performed appeared to be a disguise for destroying waste explosive materials.”

Here is a description, from a 1984 Rockwell manual, of thermal treatment of explosive waste:

“To effect the burning, the explosives shall be spread out in a longitudinally split 55-gallon drums to a continues thickness no greater than one inch mixed with sawdust and remotely ignited with an electric match or solid propellant lighter, from behind a proper barricade.”

In a memo two weeks after the blast, a Cal/OSHA official implied that Heiney and Pugh were blowing up wastes, saying they had drawn the materials from a 6,955-pound stockpile that the company no longer needed and that was “awaiting proper environmental disposal.”

“The materials were used in this instance due to their availability,” Cal/OSHA safety engineer Barry Blodgett said in the Aug. 8, 1994, memo.

But in terse, written responses to questions from The Times, Rocketdyne officials disputed the notion that the compounds described in the Blodgett memo were wastes--a key legal distinction because Rocketdyne could store chemical inventories indefinitely but lacked a state permit to store explosive wastes.

“We do not agree that these materials were wastes,” the company said. Nonetheless, Rocketdyne said Friday, all 6,955 pounds have “been removed or properly disposed of” in the 11 months since the Blodgett memo. Citing the pending criminal probe by the FBI and other agencies, company officials declined to elaborate on any of their written responses.

Interviews with people in the waste-disposal business indicate that Rocketdyne was canvassing the waste-disposal industry before and after the accident, contacting the three major U.S. commercial explosives-disposal sites.

Jim Gallion, facilities manager for Laidlaw Environmental Services Thermal Treatment Inc. in Colfax, La., said the firm gave Rocketdyne information on Laidlaw’s services in May, 1994, and again in July a couple of weeks before the fatal accident.

In 1994, Rocketdyne officials also visited the explosive-waste incinerator that ICI Explosives Environmental Co. was then building in Joplin, Mo. The incinerator opened for business last March, and in April Rocketdyne again discussed with ICI the possible disposal of Rocketdyne wastes there, an ICI official told The Times.

Rocketdyne did dispose of some of the material at the Chemical Waste Management explosive-waste incinerator in Sauget, Ill. Arlene Lyons, environmental and safety manager at the site, said some eight drums of azide polymer were destroyed by the Chemical Waste incinerator on March 20 of this year--although this was considerably less than the 6,325 pounds of the azide compound that Blodgett observed last August.

Without specifying quantities, Rocketdyne said in its responses to The Times that it had shipped some materials to the Chemical Waste incinerator and others to the ENSCO incinerator in El Dorado, Ark. ENSCO officials said they accept some types of flammable wastes but could not immediately find a record of the shipments from Rocketdyne.

State toxics regulators say they would consider the compounds waste if they are not to be used for other purposes or if the expiration dates on a particular batch had expired. State law requires that the company notify the Department of Toxic Substances Control if such materials are on hand for more than 90 days.