Group items tagged

California's top environmental cop Monday rejected an offer to list the contaminated Rocketdyne Santa Susana Field Lab near Simi Valley as a federal Superfund cleanup site, saying the state can do the job quicker and more thoroughly.

Santa Susana Field Laboratory history * Data fuzzy on severity of two U.S. accidents Rocketdyne Propulsion and Power became one of the nation's main builders of rocket engines during the Cold War, and later became a major producer of "Star Wars" defense technology. Atomics International, a separate division of Rocketdyne's parent corporation, also set up shop at the 2,850-acre Santa Susana Field Laboratory south of Simi Valley, where it operated 10 small nuclear test reactors. The legacy of technological innovations at the Field Lab co-exists with a reality of chemical and nuclear contamination over a period of more than 50 years:

he U.S. Environmental Protection Agency wants the help of former workers at the Santa Susana Field Laboratory to identify contamination from nuclear and radiological projects at the site. The EPA is interested in interviewing former workers for three companies-Atomics International, Rocketdyne and Rockwell-who may know about spills, dumping or other releases of radiological material, the agency said in a news release this week. The lab was established in 1946 and covers nearly 2,900 acres in eastern Ventura County, just west of the San Fernando Valley section of Los Angeles.

he U.S. Environmental Protection Agency wants the help of former workers at the Santa Susana Field Laboratory to identify contamination from nuclear and radiological projects at the site. The EPA is interested in interviewing former workers for three companies-Atomics International, Rocketdyne and Rockwell-who may know about spills, dumping or other releases of radiological material, the agency said in a news release this week. The lab was established in 1946 and covers nearly 2,900 acres in eastern Ventura County, just west of the San Fernando Valley section of Los Angeles.

Dozens of workers diagnosed with cancer after their employment at the Santa Susana Field Laboratory may have more leverage in claiming federal compensation to help with their health care. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health first granted a special designation earlier this month for those assigned to the field lab's 270-acre Area IV, where much of the nuclear work was conducted. The designation applies to those who were exposed to radiation for at least 250 days, between Jan. 1, 1955 and Dec, 31, 1958. On Wednesday, the federal agency broadened the designation to include those who worked at the field lab in 1959, the year of a partial nuclear meltdown at the site. The federal action is the result of a efforts by Bonnie Klea of West Hills, who worked as a secretary for Rocketdyne in the 1960s. A survivor of bladder cancer, she compiled letters, press releases, news articles and documentaries about radioactive and chemical contamination at the site. She delivered the petition in 2007, after learning that the Department of Labor had denied most of the claims for compensation filed by cancer-stricken workers under the 2000 Energy Employees Occupational Illness Program Act. Of the 993 claims filed by Thursday with the Department of Labor, 249 had been denied, 164 had been approved and the rest are pending.

Tests have uncovered radioactive contaminants in an open-air burn pit, already rife with chemical pollutants, at the Santa Susana Field Laboratory, according to state regulatory officials. Low levels of radium-226 were discovered during testing this fall, said Norman Riley, the field lab project director for California's Department of Toxic Substances Control. "These are very low levels of radionuclides, and certainly the discovery of radium is not that surprising," Riley said Monday. "It's fairly common to find radium in landfills. We don't know if we found all that there is to find, and it doesn't answer the question of where it came from."

One of the companies accused of polluting the drinking water in the Rialto area has sued the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency saying the agency is withholding evidence that supports the company's case. Charlotte-based Goodrich Corp. says in a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., that EPA has modelling showing the company is not responsible for the contamination. The EPA is in the process of declaring a 160-acre portion of Rialto a Superfund site because various chemicals, including perchlorate, are flowing through the city and toward Colton and Riverside.

Officials at a Rialto-based public water purveyor are accusing San Bernardino County of illegally demolishing and burying a hazardous waste-disposal facility and likely contributing to water contamination flowing through Rialto. Lawyers for the West Valley Water District say state and federal laws were violated when the facility was demolished, and they say the debris spread across a wide area and was buried. The California Department of Toxic Substances Control, or DTSC, is investigating what happened at the Broco Inc. site, named for the hazardous-waste disposal operation located there from the 1960s to the 1980s. The county purchased the property in 1994 to expand the Mid-Valley Sanitary Landfill.

To the consternation of the Simi Valley Radiation Rangers the proposed project at Runkle Canyon, pejoratively named Runkledyne by critics, is coming closer to getting final approval. I wonder if the economic slow down will do more to delay the project than all of the recent hearings, meetings, and tests have done. Local investigative environmental reporter Michael Collins isn't satisfied and continues to insist the project is unsafe and that the process of testing for unsafe chemicals has been riddled with errors. Here is a quote from a recent article that appeared in the Ventura County Reporter:

"The Environmental Protection Agency has a new weapon in the fight against radioactive contamination at a Los Angeles-area lab: Mules. The EPA will use four mules to carry high-tech scanning equipment to detect radiation on steep and rocky terrain at the Santa Susana Field Laboratory. The EPA is conducting a survey of soil and water contamination at the lab near Simi Valley, where rocket engines were tested for years and a partial meltdown of a nuclear reactor took place in 1959. About 500 acres of the lab will be scanned for gamma radiation."