FIRE ON THE MOUNTAIN
ValleyBeat has obtained an internal EPA document after the agency’s first site inspection in 1989 by Gregg Dempsey, a Las Vegas-based EPA radiation expert. He called Rocketdyne’s soil and water sampling totally inaccurate, noting the filtering and decanting and other technical mistakes. He faulted SSFL washing of plants in vegetation tests, removing any possible air residue, and the technique where Rocketdyne “ashes,” or burns plants before radiation testing, which aerates the vegetation, driving off unknown amounts of radionuclides. “It is also clear to me that Rocketdyne does not have a good ‘handle’ on where the radiation has been inadvertently or intentionally dumped onsite,” Dempsey wrote. “Most of the evidence on site is incompletely documented or anecdotal.”
It’s the Water
Residents, activists, and government officials are more concerned about what pollutants are leaching offsite and possibly making people sick – and perhaps even killing them. “Senator Feinstein’s position has always been to make sure that contamination from Rocketdyne is cleaned up to a standard that is not hazardous to the community,” says Feinstein aide, Scott Gerber. “She’s monitored cleanup efforts, asked for a community health study, and has requested funding to make sure that the cleanup is done in a way that is satisfactory to the residents.”
Officials at Ahmanson Ranch, which has been dogged by environmental issues for years, deny that there are any problems. “At this point, available evidence does not support the conclusion that Rocketdyne has contaminated the site of the Ahmanson Ranch project,” says Tim McGarry, spokesman for Washington Mutual, which owns the Ranch property. “No federal, state, or local agency responsible for the Rocketdyne cleanup has concluded or suggested that Rocketdyne contaminants have migrated to the Ahmanson Ranch property – or, indeed, have migrated off the Rocketdyne property.”
Ventura County Supervisor Linda Parks, who openly opposes the proposed Ahmanson Ranch development in her district, is worried about the Rocketdyne cleanup. “Leaving contamination on site can pose a health risk, depending on future uses of the site, and the associated contaminated rain runoff will continue to be an issue,” says Parks. “I would like to see a concerted effort to place the contaminated soil at a proper waste site.”
Parks has concerns that the toxic rocket-fuel oxidizer, perchlorate, is flowing into her district and then into the headwaters of the Los Angeles River. A March 9, 2000, check by the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System program revealed a reading of 17ppb draining from Rocketdyne into Happy Valley, a drainage outlet that leads down into the San Fernando Valley through Dayton Creek and Bell Canyon and ends up flowing into the headwaters of the Los Angeles River.
California’s “public health safety goal” of acceptable levels of perchlorate in water was lowered in December from 4ppb to 2ppb in response to growing alarm. “Perchlorate disrupts how the thyroid functions,” according to the EPA. “Impairment of thyroid function in expectant ¯ mothers may impact the fetus and newborn and result in effects including changes in behavior, delayed development and decreased learning capability. Changes in thyroid hormone levels may also result in thyroid gland tumors.”
Rocketdyne has consistently denied that there is any offsite migration of toxins from SSFL. (Rocketdyne officials did not return calls for this story.) In a previous interview, Steve Lafflam, Rocketdyne’s Division Director for Safety, Health, and Environmental Affairs, had harsh words for environmentalists critical of Rocketdyne. “There are special-interest groups that have put out a rash of lies,” Lafflam said. “They’ve gone forward with litigation that’s going to cost a lot of people a lot of money. And there’s no merit to it at all.”
However, sampling of Ahmanson Ranch’s groundwater last summer revealed that one well, Well M-1, had a reading of 28ppb of perchlorate. Remember, that’s less than two miles from the SSFL. When the Ventura County Board of Supervisors voted 4-1 in favor of the Ahmanson development in December, it was aware of the problems up on “The Hill.” The Supes addressed that niggling issue by ordering that the well with perchlorate be eventually destroyed and never used to irrigate Ahmanson Ranch’s proposed golf courses, playgrounds, and common areas.
In December, it was revealed that perchlorate had been found in 18 wells in Simi Valley. The highest reading was 19.2ppb – nearly 10 times the new health limit concerning the powdery white substance in California drinking water.
Rocketdyne has said that there is no evidence that perchlorate has migrated offsite toward Simi or Ahmanson Ranch, and has actually suggested that children playing with fireworks may be the cause of the pollution. This, despite the fact that the Regional Water Quality Control Board (RWQCB) states that perchlorate “occurrence [is] closely associated with aerospace and defense sites.”
The RWQCB plans to re-test Well M-1 for perchlorate on June 13. In a May 15 interview, ValleyBeat asked the RWQCB if it also planned to test for radionuclides. Executive Officer Dennis Dickerson said that Rocketdyne had “the option to test for radionuclides if perchlorate is found again.” In a memo received May 30, a team of RWQCB executives wrote: “Sampling and analysis of groundwater samples for radionuclides will be performed at the Ahmanson Well No. 1.”
A recent California-EPA Department of Toxic Substances Control map of perchlorate hits on SSFL, compiled with the same water district, shows that another hot hit of perchlorate was found on the Ahmanson Ranch property on March 6. There is a reading of less than 40 ug/l on the Ahmanson property close to Rocketdyne’s property. (Ug/l is the same as ppb but is used for water measurements instead of the “parts per billion” measure for soil.) Dickerson said this measurement is, basically, dicey. “It’s 1 to 39.9ppb – we can’t be sure,” he said in an interview. This seems to contradict Rocketdyne claims that no poisonous perchlorate is leaching offsite – and is not good tidings for Ahmanson Ranch.
