TWO MILE ISLAND
Parks doesn’t quite see it that way. “There are no regulations requiring developers who want to build projects near Rocketdyne to first test for contamination of water or soil,” Parks told CityBeat. “We are the first line of defense for protecting the public from being exposed to contamination in the ground below them, the air above them, or the water that may be used to irrigate the landscape around them.”
Rocketdyne Acres
Despite the failure of the Ahmanson Ranch development and the fierce opposition to Rocketdyne ever being developed for housing without a stringent cleanup, three developments are springing up within two miles of SSFL. The drainage for the dioxin-polluted Old Conservation Yard at the lab heads down toward a newly approved housing project in Runkle Canyon. The project is slated for 461 homes within a mile of the radiological area of SSFL – much closer than Ahmanson Ranch. Samples collected January 8 during an environmental review of a 550-acre portion of the 1,595-acre site, indicated levels of perchlorate at 50 ppb and 60 ppb in two of four groundwater/silt specimens. This is approximately double the 28 ppb reading of perchlorate found in the groundwater under Ahmanson Ranch. The developer, Peter Kiesecker, said he won’t use the Runkle groundwater for irrigation but has left open the option of building a 23-acre, 18-hole golf course at the development that would require vast amounts of cheap water.
Another development in the works is Dayton Creek Estates, which is a mile downwind from SSFL in Los Angeles County. One hundred and fifty single-family homes are planned there on 64.2 acres out of the development’s 359.4 total acreage. Dayton Creek runs through the project and is fed by SSFL’s Happy Valley drainage, which has undergone massive excavation due to perchlorate contamination. The project’s 1999 Final Environmental Impact Report (FEIR), fully aware of SSFL’s proximity, doesn’t note impacts on the development from SSFL in its “areas of controversy” section. The Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board (LARWQCB) estimates that 69 million gallons of discharges, from SSFL rocket engine tests alone, go down Dayton and an adjacent creek every year. The developers do note, however, that the FEIR is not a “definitive investigation of contamination.”
Rounding out major new development around Rocketdyne are the proposed Colton Lee Communities. That plan envisions building 189 apartments 1.5 miles from SSFL. The eastern Simi Valley site is on 23 acres of a former horse ranch in Santa Susana Knolls, the Simi neighborhood closest to Rocketdyne.
Positively False
The findings of perchlorate in groundwater slated for Ahmanson Ranch caused concern for government agencies and Boeing alike, and the LARWQCB ordered retests of the well. The news that the well retested without any detection of perchlorate delighted Rocketdyne officials, according to an August 2003 article in the Los Angeles Times. “Based on this conflicting data, our conclusion is there is no perchlorate [in the wells],” a Rocketdyne official told the paper. “We have committed to do a lot more to demonstrate and prove that.”
But the testing protocols, partly developed by Boeing, ignored some of the basic recommendations of the scientists hired by adjacent Calabasas in that city’s lawsuit against the development. “A more precise determination of perchlorate in the aquifer could only be made using an adequately designed and constructed monitoring well using appropriate sampling techniques,” said former Calabasas analyst Matt Hagemman. “Well MW-1 is in no way an adequate monitoring well according to state guidelines.”
Boeing’s new, suddenly sunny analysis didn’t sit well with DTSC’s Ron Baker, the agency’s communications director. “We have high confidence that perchlorate was present in the well,” he said in the same article, referring to the positive reading a year earlier.
To further attack the original finding of perchlorate, Boeing hired a firm, AMEC, to analyze the methods used by Advanced Technology Laboratories (ATL), the lab that had detected the toxin in Ahmanson Ranch groundwater. ATL was subcontracted to do the analysis by American Scientific Laboratory, which was hired by Ventura County in 2002. The AMEC report concluded that the analysis by Advanced Technology Labs was faulty. What surprised some observers is that Boeing approached the LARWQCB and asked the agency to send the report to the lab and ask it to reconsider its conclusions, which the water board did. ATL subsequently changed its report, without giving any explanation, writing that it “acknowledges the possibility of misidentifying the perchlorate peak thus reporting a false positive for the result.”
Supervisor Parks questioned the propriety of the LARWQCB’s actions and asked how it serves the public interest to seemingly take the side of the company. “It is of concern that the Boeing Company would take the step of hiring a laboratory (AMEC) to dispute the finding of perchlorate on a piece of property Boeing doesn’t even own,” wrote Parks in a March 8 letter to the Board. “While Boeing’s move to discredit American Scientific Laboratory’s findings may be in the best interest of Boeing, I question the Regional Board taking Boeing’s AMEC study to the American Scientific Laboratory for review and asking them to reconsider their previous detect, suggesting ‘if … you determine the perchlorate was a false positive, then please issue a revised laboratory report.’”
“Boeing did this independently,” said Dave Bacharowski, LARWQCB assistant executive officer. “It wasn’t something we requested. They are concerned with the problems with having data out there, which may not be of the highest quality or be questionable.”
The state DTSC also got involved and blasted AMEC’s report and the lab’s sudden change of opinion: “We … strongly and vehemently disagree with the conclusion that the Ahmanson Ranch detection is a false positive,” wrote Fred Seto of the DTSC’s Hazardous Materials Laboratory in a November 17, 2003 e-mail.
