Rockwell Pleads Guilty in Blast Case, Pays $6.5 Million

Rockwell International pleaded guilty in federal court Thursday to three felony counts of hazardous-waste mishandling and wrote a record $6.5-million check to the U.S. government to pay fines for the 1994 chemical explosion that killed two scientists at the firm’s open-air field lab in southeastern Ventura County.

John Stocker, Rockwell’s legal vice president, stood before Judge Mariana R. Pfaelzer and admitted that the firm’s Canoga Park-based Rocketdyne division had illegally stored and burned an exotic chemical called triaminoguanidine nitrate, at the Santa Susana Field Lab.

And he agreed that the company would pay the U.S. Treasury a $6.5-million fine, the largest ever won in a hazardous-waste case in California and the maximum penalty for two counts of illegal disposal and one count of illegal storage of hazardous wastes.

In exchange, Rockwell receives immunity from any other federal criminal charges in any case of illegal handling, disposal, generation, storage or transportation of hazardous wastes that may have occurred since 1991. After hearing full details of the far-reaching plea agreement, Pfaelzer approved it.

Moments later, Stocker handed over to Assistant U.S. Atty. Nathan Hochman a $6.5-million check drawn on Rockwell International’s corporate account, for deposit in the U.S. Treasury’s general fund. He also turned over the first of three thick reports on the company’s internal investigations of the July 26, 1994, explosion that killed physicists Otto K. Heiney, 53, and Larry A. Pugh, 51, as they were burning the propellant to get rid of it.

As prosecutors focused their investigation more heavily on past and present Rocketdyne employees who may have ordered the illegal burning, U.S. Atty. Nora Manella called Rockwell’s plea “a very successful resolution to this case.”