Rocketdyne Gets Funds to Clean Site

The U. S. Department of Energy on Tuesday awarded Rocketdyne a multiyear $148.5-million contract to clean up contaminated water, soil and buildings at the Santa Susana Field Laboratory in the mountains northwest of Chatsworth.

Federal officials and Rocketdyne representatives hailed the contract, which runs through 2006, as a cost-efficient way to clean up the Energy Technology Engineering Center. That complex--government-leased land where scientists conducted nuclear research during the Cold War--sits on 90 acres in the rugged Santa Susana Mountains near Simi Valley.

“One of my top priorities for the department includes safe, effective and expeditious cleanup at DOE sites,” Energy Secretary Bill Richardson said Tuesday. “The new contract will strictly focus on environment, and health and safety of the workers and the public.”

A critic said that giving the contract to the aerospace giant without seeking competitive bids was a farce.

“If I recall, the entity that made the mess was Rocketdyne under contract for the Department of Energy,” said Joseph K. Lyou, executive director of the anti-nuclear group Committee to Bridge the Gap. “Now the government is taking taxpayers’ dollars to pay that polluter, Rocketdyne, an enormous amount of money to clean the mess they made. What a sham.”

While saying she was delighted with the contract award, U. S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said she hoped that government agencies could also scrape together dollars to study the health of people who live near the open-air field lab.

Many Rocketdyne neighbors blame the company’s activities for their health problems. A recent UCLA study that found higher-than-expected cancer death rates among some Rocketdyne employees added to community concerns.

“I regret the fact that the [energy] department is not able to fund the 1998 community health study project but has requested that the Department of Health and Human Services consider doing so,” Feinstein said. “I believe it is important that these health studies be finished. . . .”

After four decades of energy development research--from nuclear to solar power--the site is tainted with radioactive materials and toxics.

In particular, ground water is contaminated with the cancer-causing agent trichloroethylene. The site, closed for cleanup since 1995, is also peppered with the contaminants mercury, petroleum hydrocarbons, dioxin and cesium-137.

Research at the site “was done under [energy department] contract, paid for by government dollars, for the public benefit,” said Dan Beck, Rocketdyne spokesman.

“It was research and development into reactors and nuclear energy used by the U. S. government, not for the commercial benefit of Rocketdyne,” he said. “The DOE is under contractual obligation to pay for the cleanup at that site. This is not a case of Rocketdyne making an environmental mess for profit and asking the taxpayers to pay for it.”

The energy department-leased land is a small part of Rocketdyne’s 2,700-acre Santa Susana Field Lab, itself the site of a separate, $59-million multiyear cleanup.

The energy department granted Rocketdyne the new contract on a noncompetitive, “sole-source” basis that, officials estimate, will save between $20 million and $50 million. Rocketdyne was able to conduct a cheaper cleanup because it already has the required permits, equipment and utilities for the work and owns the land that the government was leasing.

“It was clear this was the best bang for the buck for the government,” said Roger H. Liddle, director of the energy department’s Environmental Restoration Office in Oakland.

“I don’t think anyone ever envisions homes up there,” he said. “But we’ll clean it up to the regulatory levels and in a manner consistent with the rest of the site.”