Water Board Grants Boeing Permits

Despite protests from critics, a state regulatory agency approved a permit Thursday that will allow Boeing’s rocket-testing lab in the Simi Hills to discharge excess water.

The Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board also approved a second permit allowing Boeing to use a biodegradable process to remove perchlorate contamination from soil at the Santa Susana Field Laboratory. Perchlorate is a toxic solvent in rocket fuel.

The permits are the latest regulations placed on the 1,500-acre site, which has been mired in detection and cleanup efforts for two decades, a pace critics say is too slow and puts the public’s health at risk.

The 56-year-old hilltop lab, where the federal government once conducted nuclear research and which experienced a partial nuclear meltdown in 1959, is above the heavily populated Simi and San Fernando valleys.

The water board’s debate Thursday centered on trichloroethylene, a highly toxic solvent used to cool rocket engines. Officials estimate that as much as 520,000 gallons of it was discharged directly into the soil before the lab stopped using it in 1993.

Because of concerns raised by neighbors and local officials, the board Thursday added trichloroethylene to the list of contaminants that Boeing must regularly monitor. The move contradicted the agency’s staff recommendation, which said trichloroethylene had not been detected in the last four to five years of testing and, therefore, was no longer required under state law to undergo the strictest monitoring.

“We pushed the limits as far as we could under the law in protecting the water quality at the Boeing site,” board Chairman Francine Diamond said after the vote in Simi Valley. “We feel this is a more stringent permit than they had before.”

The new discharge permit also sets a limit for perchlorate of up to 6 parts per billion in groundwater and orders Boeing to establish 11 new monitoring sites closer to some of the most contaminated areas of the lab. It increases the frequency of testing during discharge -- which occurs in the rainy season when holding ponds overflow -- at the two outfalls closest to neighboring communities.

As an added precaution, the agency agreed to conduct sampling during the rainy season in the neighborhood closest to the lab, Santa Susana Knolls.

Steve Lafflam, director of operations at the field lab, said adding trichloroethylene to the list of contaminants went too far.

“Boeing is by its nature a research and science organization and doesn’t see the need for putting things in for political or emotional reasons,” he said. “But we are going to comply with the permit and get on with it.”

The other permit allows Boeing to clean up 8,500 cubic yards of soil contaminated with perchlorate. The soil will be treated with two types of chemicals that will cause the contaminant to biodegrade this summer.