TWO MILE ISLAND
On July 19, the Natural Resources Defence Council threatened to file a lawsuit, saying the planned cleanup is woefully inadequate.
SB 1456 made it easily through the state senate and then the state assembly’s committee on environmental affairs. But it died on the assembly floor, 39-30, with 11 abstentions, on June 24, after Boeing lobbied intensely against it. In an odd twist of logic, Lafflam had told the Los Angeles Daily News prior to the vote “It’s a disincentive to clean up to residential standards.” Kuehl decried the company’s behavior before the vote as “deplorable.” It was her third attempt to pass protective legislation concerning the site.
CityBeat has obtained records that show that Boeing contributed a total of $83,538 to 28 current members of the California Assembly between 1999 and 2003. This represents 35 percent of the assembly. The company also contributed money indirectly to both the Republican and Democratic Assembly PACs, and to the California Manufacturers and Technology Association PAC, which also lobbied against the Kuehl bill.
Of the 28 Assembly members who received money from Boeing, 21 subsequently voted against the legislation and an additional four abstained, which has the same effect as a “no” vote since, under Assembly rules, a bill needs 41 affirmative votes to pass. Thus 25 of the 28 recipients of Boeing’s contributions helped kill the legislation.
“The events of the last few days demonstrate once again that big polluters are not merely toxic to the communities that reside nearby, but also to the democratic system,” said Dan Hirsch, president of the Committee to Bridge the Gap environmental group. In 1989, Hirsch first brought to media attention the SRE partial meltdown, and was largely responsible for shutting down Rocketdyne’s nuke work in 1990 because of the company’s safety and pollution record. “All but two or three of the recipients of these legalized bribes voted the way Boeing wanted on the Kuehl bill.”
Residential development of the polluted lab property isn’t the only land use concern troubling legislators. Alarm over offsite migration of Rocketdyne contaminants is what prompted Supervisor Linda Parks to take steps to make sure it doesn’t go unchecked. Parks’s concern with SSFL contamination dates back to the Ahmanson Ranch hearings in late 2002.
In that case, mega-bank Washington Mutual’s Ahmanson Land Company fought a 17-year battle to transform 2,783 acres of pristine oak-dotted land into a new conurbation. This year, WaMu had planned to begin building 3,050 luxury residences, two golf courses, and 400,000 square feet of commercial space on its property located on the southeast corner of Ventura County. But when Ventura County tested the groundwater in 2002 and found perchlorate, the plans began to unravel and the development tanked in part due to toxic troubles.
First Line of Defense
On May 4, Parks introduced to the Ventura County Board of Supervisors a recommendation that would establish a two-mile radius around “known rocket test sites,” which would “require major discretionary land use projects proposed within two miles of existing or former rocket testing sites to perform testing for toxic contaminants such as perchlorate and trichloroethylene (TCE).” The measure is aimed at catching potential contamination before it is disbursed into surrounding communities by grading or drainage, and ensuring that homes are not built on top of unidentified toxic
waste.
“Testing for toxic contaminants prior to development helps protect the public’s health,” said Parks. “It is as sound a requirement as those currently in place that require testing for landslides, floodways, or earthquake fault lines when siting a development project. Currently there are no requirements to test for contamination in the development process. The County of Ventura was reluctant to test for contaminants in wells on Ahmanson Ranch when the housing development was going through environmental review. It was only as a result of citizen pressure that the county acquiesced, tested, and found perchlorate ´´ in the one well they tested. Assuring the testing occurs routinely with developments in areas where contamination is predictable makes sense.”
Debating the motion, fellow Supervisor Judy Mikels, a vehement proponent of the failed Ahmanson Ranch project and in whose district Rocketdyne is located, eyed this reporter and described media coverage of the ranch’s pollution woes as “hysterical.” Mikels went on to oppose the motion. “There is ultimately an underlying agenda beneath this,” she added.
“Why wouldn’t you want to do this, that’s the question?” retorted Supervisor John Flynn, also an ardent supporter of the unsuccessful WaMu development but a backer of Parks’s initiative. “It seems to me to be a prudent thing to do, since it has been on the radar screen, to make sure that people are going to be safe,” Flynn later told CityBeat. “That’s why I supported Linda in the motion that she made.”
“It makes common sense to be cautious about an issue that has so many unknowns,” said Board of Supervisors Chair Steve Bennett, who also backed Parks. The item will be up before the Board for a final vote July 27.
Naturally, Rocketdyne was less than pleased with Parks’s proposal. “Requiring invasive testing for specific chemicals as part of the Initial Study based simply on geographic location will overlap and conflict with existing regulatory programs,” wrote Lafflam in a June 3 missive to the county. “Additionally, a testing requirement would unnecessarily stigmatize property, and create the potential for increased costs and litigation for property owners affected by the requirements.”
