2 Scientists Face Trial in Rocketdyne Explosion

Seven years ago, at a field laboratory on a rugged plateau in the Simi Hills of Ventura County, five Rocketdyne employees were burning rocket propellants when the chemicals exploded, killing two scientists and burning a technician.

At the time, company officials said the men were preparing to conduct the third of five experiments testing the shock waves emitted when the chemical mixture burns.

But federal prosecutors dispute its scientific value, saying the employees were merely disposing of hazardous waste by burning it, a once-common practice banned in 1989.

This week, prosecutors will ask a jury in Riverside to convict scientists Joseph E. Flanagan, 60, of Stanwood, Wash., and Edgar R. Wilson, 65, of Chatsworth of illegally burning chemical waste at the Santa Susana Field Laboratory, just west of Chatsworth, on July 21 and July 26 in 1994, the day of the deadly blast.

Flanagan also is charged with illegal hazardous waste storage.

As director of Rocketdyne’s Chemical Technology Group, Flanagan supervised the five men involved in the incident--including Wilson and James F. Weber, the group’s hazardous waste coordinator. Flanagan was not present at the time of the accident.

Like Flanagan, Weber, 51, of Moorpark was charged with three felonies related to the illegal storage and treatment of hazardous waste at the lab. He pleaded guilty in August to illegally storing explosive materials, a misdemeanor, and he faces up to a year in prison.

If convicted, Flanagan and Wilson, a former sheriff’s deputy-turned lab technician, face up to five years in prison on each count and a $250,000 fine.

The three employees were indicted by a federal grand jury in 1999, three years after Rockwell International Corp.’s Rocketdyne Division pleaded guilty to three felony counts of mishandling hazardous chemicals in the same incident and paid a $6.5-million fine, the largest penalty ever assessed in California at the time.

Although the case stems from the fatal explosion, no one is charged in the deaths of Otto K. Heiney, 53, of Canoga Park, and Larry A. Pugh, 51, of Thousand Oaks. Jurors will not even be told the alleged environmental crimes resulted in the fatalities.

Instead, the two-month trial will focus on whether the chemicals that Heiney and Pugh burned were part of legitimate scientific research or illegal waste disposal.

To win, prosecutors must do more than prove the materials were illegally stored and treated at the lab, violating the Federal Resource Conservation and Recovery Act.

“We have to prove knowledge,” said Assistant U.S. Atty. William Carter, chief of the environmental crimes section.

‘If It Is Not Waste, There Is No Crime’

Both defendants have denied the charges. They say they believed Heiney and Pugh were conducting actual research, in part, because the chemical mixtures used cost hundreds of dollars a pound and were being tested at other labs with government contracts.

“If it is not waste, there is no crime,” said criminal defense lawyer Leonard Sharenow, who represents Wilson. He drew a distinction between waste and excess materials.

Unlike many illegal disposal cases, the chemicals burned at the Santa Susana lab were not sludge or another easily identifiable waste product, he argued.

But the prosecutor said the so-called “tests” offered none of the usual evidence of serious scientific work, such as data collection.

“These things don’t resemble any kind of test anyone that I have talked to in this business is familiar with,” Carter said in June 2000.

He argued that the burns were identical to those Rocketdyne once legally used to get rid of chemical waste. Except the company’s permit for burning such waste had expired.

In a key ruling for the prosecution, U.S. District Judge Robert J. Timlin will permit Heiney’s widow to testify about her husband’s growing frustration with “stupid environmental rules.”

During the months before his death, Heiney confided to his wife, Judy, about how the lab could “get around” such rules, according to court documents.

As part of her statement to federal investigators, Judy Heiney said her husband would not have disposed of the chemicals without Flanagan’s approval.

But Flanagan told a Rocketdyne lawyer in 1995 that Heiney had asked him if he could conduct some experiments by burning unnecessary materials for a research paper he was preparing, court documents show. Flanagan told the lawyer that he knew about the burning and believed it was for legitimate scientific purposes.

Wilson also believed he was participating in authentic scientific research, Sharenow said.

Because of the top-secret government research at the lab, technicians like Wilson did not question procedure, Sharenow added.

Rocketdyne Paid $600,000 Fine

The lab, opened in 1947 by Rocketdyne’s predecessor, North American Aviation, is synonymous with decades of far-reaching government and defense work. Engineers at the field lab, known internally as “Santa Sue,” have developed rocket engines for early nuclear missiles and every U.S. manned space mission from Mercury to the space shuttle.

Despite its prestigious mission, prosecutors say the field lab had a history of problems in properly disposing of chemical waste.

In 1990, Rocketdyne paid a $600,000 fine to the California Department of Toxic Substances Control for burning more scrap chemicals at its burn pit than its permit allowed, prosecutors said.

At least three former Rocketdyne employees will testify that they illegally burned waste or knew of other burnings at the lab.

According to court documents, another employee, Bertram Moy, told federal investigators that Flanagan once instructed him between 1990 and 1992 to get rid of excessive hazardous material by “running a test” on it. He said he filled a bucket with waste chemicals and burned it, using a process he called a “bucket test.”

Another worker said he and Wilson burned hazardous waste in a 30-gallon drum in 1994.

Despite their admissions, neither Moy nor the other worker was charged.

In contrast to its earlier statements, Rocketdyne in its plea bargain admitted that at least one of its employees was illegally getting rid of waste when the deadly explosion occurred.

But Timlin excluded those statements after the defense lawyers argued that they were irrelevant. Corporations often make business decisions when faced with a criminal prosecution, Flanagan’s attorney, John D. Vandevelde, wrote in a motion.

In this case, Rocketdyne could have lost billions of dollars in government contracts and jeopardized its 1996 sale to Boeing Co., now based in Chicago, the motion notes.

Such interests, however, did not cloud the decision by the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health to fine Rocketdyne $202,500 for violating state worker-safety rules and for failing to notify the agency where and when the explosives were being used.

Cal/OSHA’s 1996 report called the tests “a disguise for destroying waste explosive materials” and concluded the scientists were illegally disposing of 160 pounds of waste, a little at a time.