Santa Susana Field Laboratory (Rocketdyne) Workgroup Meeting – October 18, 2007
The Workgroup meeting is held quarterly at the Simi Valley Cultural Center. The discussion topics were the status of State Senate Bill 990 sponsored by Sen. Sheila Kuehl (D-Los Angeles) and signed into law by Governor Schwarzenneger October 12. “Pay Dirt” explored this issue.
This meeting, partially covered in “Dirty Business,” was notable for the exchanges between Norm Riley of the California EPA’s Department of Toxic Substances Control, which will oversee the cleanup of Rocketdyne, and Dan Hirsch who is the president of the Committee to Bridge the Gap, a nuclear watchdog group. HIrsch first brought to light pollutions related to laboratory in 1979 and has been active in the issue since.
The following are selected excerpts from the meeting:
Norm Riley:
“Boeing, nonetheless, commits to clean it up to EPA standards under the direction of the State. That strikes me as a pretty good compromise especially when you consider the alternatives. The bill could have been vetoed. It was not clear, as hard as you fought, it was not clear that the bill would not be vetoed. On the contrary, from certain perspectives, it looked like there was a good chance that it would be vetoed. And I would put it to you that this negotiation that occurred would not have been necessary had it been certain that the bill was going to pass. So that’s one thing to consider. Boeing could have decided, ‘Okay, we’re not going to transfer the property; we’ll put back into commercial or industrial activity. That could have happened too. And there are other things, scenarios that could have played out.
“What played out here is that Boeing saw the writing on the wall. It realized that the game was up and it said ‘Okay, what’s the best that we could do?’ And this is the compromise that was reached – open space, cleaned to a residential standard under the direction of the State according standards prescribed by the State. So I do think it is important to make sure that the agreement does all the things that it needs to do. You’ve read some thing about public participation and I think that the public should be involved.
“I think that Senator Kuehl and Assemblymember Brownley and other members of the legislature have a very keen interest in this and will be briefed on a regular basis about these developments, about the agreement as it forms up and I would expect through that Dan and others will have an opportunity to see what is going on – I certainly hope so. But, of course, I don’t speak for the Governor; I speak for DTSC. The best I can do for you is recommend that we take every opportunity to assure, as Dan says, that the public is not frozen out.
“I really do believe that this is a good compromise because open space – and it will be cleaned up to a standard that will be protective of not only for people living on it, but we will insist as long as we are superintending the work, that it will be protective of people living on the slopes of the mountain and people living on the base of the mountain, essentially protective of everyone living just outside the boundary of the facility. And if it is safe enough for them, then it will be safe enough for people living at greater distances, we believe.”
Dan Hirsch:
“I want you to have listened very carefully to what Norm said. He’s a loyal soldier; he has defended what his department and governor has done with eloquence. However, remember the very first document I showed you. Boeing and DOE already claim to have cleaned the site up to residential standards. I’ll read their claim: ‘The deal that was struck does not specify what those numbers will be like just that it will be residential standards.’ Boeing says ‘we’ve already done that.’ In their perspective they don’t have to remove an ounce more of dirt and there is nothing in this agreement that gives us any assurance that the next private deal between the administration and Boeing will, in fact, provide any standards any different.
“Secondly, you notice that Norm said that the members of the legislature will be briefed on what the administration and Boeing are agreeing to and that probably I will learn what is being done. That’s the same as being frozen out. We are still not – you are still not in those negotiations. The negotiations are purely between the polluter and the administration, the same two entities that issued that misleading press release making you think that these new standards are being adopted. We are being told to trust them, that something better than what we got today will come out of it. There is absolutely no reason to believe that is the case.
“The agreement, the letter of intent has a paragraph that says that it will be cleaned up to clean up standards specified in the following paragraph. The following paragraph has no specificity to it at all, simply that there will be some form of residential standard which Boeing says they have already done. So, look, Norm’s argument that ‘hey, you are better off that the Governor didn’t veto it; that’s a calculation. Senator Kuehl clearly made it; you all can make it. In some sense, it’s right because it gives you the opportunity to fight what the administration and Boeing are trying to do behind closed doors to try to preserve that bill. But please understand, there is no compromise. There is no agreement between Boeing which is get this current standard struck from state law and we will improve our clean up by a factor of ten, by a factor of five, by a factor of fifteen. There is no agreement whatsoever that the current standards I showed you, the 9.2 picocuries per gram of cesium-137, is going to get any better. The law now requires it to get much better. If they succeed in overriding the law, and to do so before there is any agreement as to what the standards will be, you will just have been played for suckers. And that, I guess, is what got me so angry. If they had told the truth; if the press release had said ‘Well, we’re signing it, but we’re really voiding it,’ then you wouldn’t have got your hopes up.”
