Board to Consider Lab Site Testing

Ventura County supervisors are scheduled to decide today whether to require developers around Boeing’s rocket-testing lab near Simi Valley to test soil and groundwater for contaminants before they can build houses on the property.

Specifically, the new policy would require developers to test for perchlorate and trichloroethylene within a two-mile radius of the Santa Susana Field Laboratory. Both substances have been found in wells at the site and are known to be harmful to humans at high levels.

“This is a landmark measure because no one has been required to do this before, to test an area where houses will be built on potentially contaminated land,” said Supervisor Linda Parks, who has proposed the new county policy.

But critics of the measure, including Supervisor Judy Mikels, who represents the area, and Supervisor Kathy Long, say the rules are unnecessary because the state already frequently tests for contaminants.

Furthermore, they say, it infringes on the property rights of landowners.

Meanwhile, in a related move Monday, local environmental group Committee to Bridge the Gap announced that it had filed an appeal with state regulators over Rocketdyne’s recently approved water discharge permit. The appeal alleges the five-year permit granted by the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board allows too many hazardous chemicals to go undetected in storm and wastewater drains at the hilltop lab.

The separate actions are the latest attempts by elected officials and environmental activists to ensure that toxic chemicals at the Santa Susana site do not migrate downhill to populated areas in the Simi and San Fernando valleys. And if they do, that the contaminants are discovered and cleaned up.

Parks said perchlorate contamination found near Ahmanson Ranch and at nearby Runkle Ranch proves that strict oversight is necessary. She said the new rules would affect only a handful of landowners, who would have to apply for zone changes and receive voter approval before they could build.

A vote on the proposal has been delayed twice to allow supervisors time to gather more information.

Boeing’s 2,700-acre field lab, perched on a rugged plateau in the Simi Hills, is best known as a rocket-engine testing site for the Air Force and NASA. Trichloroethylene is a solvent used to clean rocket engines, and perchlorate is used in rocket fuel.

From the 1950s through the 1980s, Rocketdyne conducted nuclear research for the government on a portion of the lab site. The work included the operation of small nuclear test reactors and recycling of highly contaminated spent fuel from nuclear fuel rods.

A partial meltdown occurred in 1959 but was not widely publicized until 20 years later when members of Committee to Bridge the Gap discovered the information while searching documents.

The group is still fighting Boeing Rocketdyne over cleanup of the contaminated field lab, and last Friday filed an appeal with the California Regional Water Quality Control Board over the lab’s new discharge permit.

The permit sets limits for the amount of chemicals allowed in storm runoff and waste discharge from the lab and establishes sampling locations and testing frequency. The permit added 11 new testing locations closer to known areas of radioactive and chemical contamination than previous sampling locations.

Dan Hirsch, president of the Committee to Bridge the Gap, said that more than 100 sources of contamination found by the state to be on the Rocketdyne property remain a public health hazard but are not included in the permit.

Water board officials said many of the chemicals listed on the previous permit were removed because no traces of them had been found in storm runoff in the last five years. They said state law prevents setting limits on the new sampling locations without previous data to justify them.

The appeal alleges those assertions violate state law and that the permit places public health at risk. The group is seeking to have the state board order the regional board to reconsider the permit, possibly establishing pollution limits for all potential contaminants found at the field lab.

“We think if it’s permitted to go unchallenged, it will handcuff regulators statewide from performing their environmental protection duties,” Hirsch said Monday.

Jonathan Bishop, interim executive officer for the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board, said the board conducted a thorough examination of the facts and followed the law in reaching its conclusion.

He said board members postponed a final vote in May to have more time to consider public comments. They even changed their minds about trichloroethylene, he said, keeping it on the list of enforceable limits rather than removing it, as originally planned.

“Our board took a really close look at the permit and put back in additional monitoring stations,” Bishop said. “They feel they were responsive and tried to craft a permit that was protective of the public.”