CLEANING UP ROCKETDYNE
Riley is the DTSC’s lead man overseeing the clean-up of the creek and, beginning Jan. 1, will also head the state’s supervision of the historic decontamination of the former Rocketdyne facility, conducted and paid for by Boeing before the aerospace and defense contractor donates the site to the state as open space never to be developed (See: “Dirty Business,” Feature, 11/1/07). It was clear to the DTSC team that there was something amiss when they inspected the site with the environmentalists June 15.
“Well, it’s not a natural material, which is to say that it doesn’t fit in with the landscape there,” Riley told the Reporter. “It’s sort of a light gray-colored material, by and large. There are some bits and pieces of various things sticking out of it, pieces of metal and so on. It’s clearly not natural material. You could just tell at a glance that it didn’t belong there. It wasn’t native soil.”
The LOX debris field contamination includes asbestos, silica and antimony. Small amounts of antimony cause dizziness, headache and depression and greater doses can lead to death after several days of frequent and violent vomiting. This area will have approximately 500 cubic yards of the tainted soil trucked offsite to a licensed landfill. 8,000 cubic yards of soil polluted by PAHs will be excavated as well from with the former shooting range and along the Northern Drainage. The work will require approximately 764 truckloads which will be covered and cleaned of tire soil and debris before leaving the cleanup site.
In the decades-long dispute over the polluted lab and the impacted surrounding areas, what is most striking is the swiftness and scope of the Sage Ranch cleanup.
“We are making that a high priority here at the Santa Susana Field Lab because we are well aware of concerns that members of the surrounding communities have,” Riley said. “I think that over the last several months in particular, our relationship with the community, their trust in us, has improved considerably because they do see that we have their interests in mind and that we are doing our best to be responsive to their concerns.”
