Rocketdyne Accused of Poor Testing

Rocketdyne was accused Wednesday night of failing to do adequate testing for chemical toxins and radioactive isotopes spilled during four decades of research at its sprawling Santa Susana Field Laboratory.

A federal environmental inspector said he found that Rocketdyne failed to thoroughly test for and clean up the residue from its nuclear research at the 2,668-acre mountaintop test complex near Simi Valley.

Rocketdyne announced in August that tests had found only background traces of radioactive elements in all but two locations, where the firm later cleaned up radioactive cesium-137 that had spilled during experiments conducted by the Department of Energy and its predecessors at the Rocketdyne lab.

But Rocketdyne and the U.S. Department of Energy used a weaker radiation-testing method than needed, said Gregg Dempsey, an independent monitor chosen by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. And he said the test engineers should have taken measurements for naturally occurring background radiation entirely off-site and not around the former site of Rocketdyne’s nuclear research areas.

Civilian environmental watchdogs also criticized the Canoga Park-based aerospace firm for hiring a chemical-spill-detecting company from San Diego County that has been accused by Los Angeles water officials of falsifying test records.

“For many years now, we’ve been accused of being paranoid with regard to the investigations up at the site . . . and the adequacy of those investigations,” said Joseph Lyou, a member of the committee that has long ridden herd on Rocketdyne’s testing and cleanup activities.

The double-barreled criticism came at Simi Valley City Hall during a meeting of the Santa Susana Field Lab Work Group, an assembly of state and federal environmental officials, Rocketdyne staff members and neighbors of the field lab.

It began with discussion of allegations against the soil-testing firm Transglobal Environmental Geochemistry (TEG), which Rocketdyne’s cleanup contractor, Ogden Environmental Services, hired last November to sniff out traces of toxic chemicals in certain areas of its field lab.

The Times reported last week that TEG was accused by officials at the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board of falsifying test records.

A 1995 water board memo said that TEG part-owner Blayne Hartman admitted he had “fabricated” two out of the three instrument checks needed to ensure the reliability of soil tests at a Los Angeles cleanup site.

And former TEG employee Stacie Wissler alleged in a 1995 wrongful-termination lawsuit that “on several occasions, Mr. Hartman asked [Wissler] to tamper with data so it would pass the Regional Water Quality Control Board requirements.”

Hartman has denied both allegations.

But last week, Rocketdyne halted soil vapor testing by TEG at the Santa Susana Field Lab until it can look into the accusations.

Rocketdyne also promised to hire another company to double-check TEG’s test results by re-sampling areas of the 120-acre testing zone where TEG found little or no trace of toxic solvents.

“I’m willing to accept that Rocketdyne had no idea that this contractor was tainted,” Lyou told the audience of nearly 100 residents and officials. “I believe this company acted properly in stopping the tests immediately, but I’d like to know how the company [TEG] was selected in the first place.”

Rocketdyne environmental spokesman Jerry Gaylord said, “We hired Odgen Environmental Services and they hired TEG. We had no idea at the time that the subcontractor was under any suspicion.”

Then the meeting turned to the report by the EPA’s Gregg Dempsey, who said, “There are questions I have about this report that still need to be resolved.”

Dempsey said Rocketdyne engineers gave the test areas a quick, insensitive pass with radiation detectors that only penetrated one foot below ground, any that they failed to spend enough time waiting for the devices to register radiation.

The engineers carried the hand-held sensors about one meter off the ground, passing them back and forth along 5-foot-wide strips laid out 25 feet apart in a grid, Dempsey said.

“The best way I can think of to describe this is if you look straight at the ground and put your hands up like this,” Dempsey said while placing his hands at his temples like horse blinders. “How much can you see? . . . It’s like cutting the [grass]: If you’re good with your lawn mower you overlap so that you don’t miss any sprigs of grass still standing up.

“My concern on this site with the size of the probes that were used is that . . . Rocketdyne cut stripes in their yard and if there was a [radiation] source that was hidden underground they might miss it,” he said.

Rocketdyne spokeswoman Lori Circle said the company had encouraged Dempsey to comment on its report. “We know that the community respects his opinion,” she said. “We’ll certainly take his comments back and review them and address them.”

Dempsey was named as an independent monitor for the cleanup of radiation that leaked into the ground from Rocketdyne’s “hot lab” for handling radioactive materials, more than a dozen automic reactors and other nuclear research sites at the field lab.

Dempsey, who won the coalition’s confidence in 1989 when he found evidence that radioactive tritium had leaked into a drain at the lab, now oversees a staff of 20 at the EPA’s Center of Environmental Restoration Monitoring and Emergency Response in Las Vegas.

During the three-hour meeting, neighbors frequently complained of Rocketdyne’s handling of its problems.

At one point, a Rocketdyne firefighter stood and announced that the company was pushing to eliminate its on-site fire department and replace it with low-wage, specially trained security guards.

The private security firm Rocketdyne is considering hiring “will hire people off the street and pay them $6, $8 an hour,” said Kelly Shelton, a 12-year veteran Rocketdyne firefighter. “If you’re looking for professionalism, if you’re looking for dedication, you’re not going to get it at that wage. You’re going to get people who don’t care.”

Circle confirmed the company intends to “out-source the organization’s function,” replacing the fire department with private contractors. The fire department handles everything from brush fires and medical emergencies to hazardous material spills at the field lab and the Canoga Park headquarters.