- As a grand jury investigates the Rocketdyne site, NASA
accepts responsibility for cleaning up around Pasadena's JPL
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- Details of a recent out-of-court settlement between defense
industry giant Boeing and alleged victims of pollutants emanating from
its Santa Susana Field Lab have remained secret but maybe not for
long.
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- Last week, Boeing announced that company officials were
being questioned by a federal grand jury regarding the Santa Susana facility
formerly known as Rocketdyne, high in the hills between Simi Valley and
Chatsworth. Previous owner Rockwell International performed nuclear experiments
on the site and, like Boeing, used highly poisonous substances to test
jet and rocket engines.
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- There's a certain irony to this twist in the nearly two-decade-long
saga of the Rocketdyne cleanup, says Dan Hirsch, president of the Committee
to Bridge the Gap. The information that was used to settle the lawsuit
is now kept under a court's seal of secrecy, yet "all the time a federal
grand jury is trying to get its hands on the records," Hirsch observed.
The residents' suit was originally filed against Boeing in 1997 by neighbors
of the mountaintop lab, many of whom are suffering from cancers and other
deadly diseases they say are the result of exposure to chemicals used at
the Rocketdyne site.
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- On September 21, Boeing and the 100 plaintiffs settled
174 claims for damages with a secret agreement. Attorneys and their clients
appeared to be pleased with the undisclosed settlement. But environmentalists
feared that the hundreds of thousands of documents and other exhibits used
in the case might never see the light of day.
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- Hirsch also noted the curious timing of the subpoenas
being delivered to Boeing officials, coming just as another federal bureaucracy
NASA finally accepted responsibility for yet another longstanding
toxic disaster, this one at the 176-acre Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena,
where some of the contaminants include such volatile organic compounds
(VOC) as trichloroethylene, carbon tetrachloride, and inorganic compounds
like the toxic rocket fuel oxidizer, perchlorate.
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- There are striking similarities and contrasts in how
the two equally high-profile, though otherwise unrelated, environmental
crises are being handled by the various federal, state, local, and quasi-public
agencies involved, Hirsch said.
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- After years of denying any responsibility, and after
being sued by the city of Pasadena in January 2004, NASA is finally prepared
to help clean up Pasadena drinking-water wells. Boeing, by contrast, "has
never, ever, ever admitted anything. Whenever they are accused of anything,
there is always an excuse," Hirsch said.
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- Boeing spokeswoman Inger Hodgson said she could not talk
about details of the subpoena received mid-November, but the grand jury
is requesting information about the company's "surface water discharge
locations," she said without elaborating. "We are definitely
cooperating with the authorities, and we will continue to do so."
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- Thom Mrozek, spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's Office
in Los Angeles, said he could not comment on the subpoena.
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- Environmentalists, however, see Boeing regularly dodging
regulatory compliance. In fact, Boeing has been cited dozens of times in
the past few years for failing to properly monitor the disposal of chemical
wastes, including perchlorate. The Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control
Board was expected to hand Boeing a cease-and-desist order this week to
top allowing chemicals to flow unchecked off the Rocketdyne site. The U.S.
Department of Energy is overseeing the SSFL's nuclear decontamination and
the California Department of Toxic Substances Control is supervising its
chemical cleanup. A housing development in Dayton Canyon, just downhill
from Rocketdyne, was recently found to have high levels of many high-level
radioactive substances, VOCs, perchlorate, and other toxins. Boeing, Hirsch
said, had been cited 40 times since 2004 for violations of its storm-drain
permit alone.
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- "But is that the basis of a federal investigation?
I don't know," Hirsch said.
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- The relationship between Boeing and its neighbors is
similar to that of the city of Pasadena, the community of neighboring Altadena,
and JPL, which is owned by NASA but managed by Caltech.
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- After years of deferring responsibility, the city last
year sued NASA and the U.S. Army over high levels of perchlorate found
in Pasadena water supplies, and officials were forced to close those wells.
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- Two weeks ago, the city tentatively accepted NASA's offer
to fund a new water-treatment plant near four closed Arroyo Seco drinking-water
wells, contingent upon final legal details still being worked out, according
to a statement issued by NASA.
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- Once operational, the plant will ideally remove chemicals
from groundwater around the most polluted site at JPL, a U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency Superfund site, which should allow the city to re-open
the closed wells, NASA spokeswoman Merrilee Fellows wrote in a statement.
NASA will pay for all of the costs related to the plant's design, construction,
and operation as well as provide technical support.
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- This is not the first time NASA has made some effort
to clean up Pasadena water wells. In 1990, the city installed a NASA-funded
air stripper to remove VOCs from water in four wells. The more recently
proposed system will likely include a system to remove VOCs from the water
and an ion exchange system to remove perchlorate, according to NASA.
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- http://www.lacitybeat.com/article.php?id=2998&IssueNum=132
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- Grand Jury Forces Boeing To Hand Over Test
Field Paperwork
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- By Daniel Wolowicz
- TheAcorn.com
- 12-20-5
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- A federal grand jury is investigating Boeing Co. for
allegedly breaking environmental laws due to waste runoff water from their
Santa Susana Field Laboratory, Boeing officials confirmed earlier this
week.
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- In mid-November, the federal grand jury subpoenaed documents
that deal with monitoring rain runoff water from the 2,600acre parcel in
the Santa Susana Hills, said Inger Hodgson, a Boeing spokesperson.
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- Hodgson said the Seattlebased aerospace company would
not comment on details of the inquiry. "We are cooperating with authorities,"
Hodgson said. "It's premature to comment on the nature of the federal
investigation at this point."
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- Local environmentalists who have been complaining of
toxic runoff from the test field for nearly 15 years welcome the grand
jury investigation.
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- "I would like to see a full exposure of the historical
behaviors of Boeing," said Elizabeth Crawford, senior environmental
specialist with the Physicians for Social Responsibility. "I am glad
to see their crimes are finally getting paid the attention that they deserve."
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- The grand jury investigation came just weeks before
a cleanup and abatement order was issued to Boeing in late November by
the California Regional Water Quality Control Board.
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- The regional water board is ordering Boeing not only
to stop discharging contaminated runoff water, but also to detail how they
plan to clean up their site in order to avoid future violations.
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- According to the regional water board, Boeing has exceeded
runoff limits at least 96 times since 1998. Pollutants found in the runoff
water that exceed allowable limits include mercury, dioxins, iron, lead,
copper and manganese.
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- Runoff from the test field travels through a dozen creeks
and rivers in both Ventura and Los Angeles counties. The runoff flows through
waterways that include Bell Creek, a tributary of the Los Angeles River,
the Arroyo Simi, Dayton Canyon Creek, Chatsworth Creek, and other smaller
drainages through Runkle and Woolsey canyons.
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- Boeing has said the excessive contaminants in the runoff
water were caused by ash from the Simi Valley fires in 2003 and the Topanga
fire in late September.
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- Although the recent wildfire scorched more than 2,000
acres of the test field, state officials said, "(The fire) does not
relieve (Boeing) of its obligation to comply with its waste discharge requirements."
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- In 2002, the regional water board hit Boeing with a
$39,000 penalty for runoff violations. The amount, said Crawford, is far
from enough.
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- "It is cheaper for (Boeing) to violate than to
comply," Crawford said.
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- Jonathan Bishop, an executive with the regional water
board, said his offices are working on a ceaseand-desist order against
Boeing, which will force the company to stop water runoff until they meet
state and federal regulations for runoff water. The order should be out
by next week.
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- If Boeing is unable to comply with runoff limits set
by the regional water board, the state has the power to fine the company
for each violation. Bishop said he could not comment on the investigation.
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- "If the regional board fined Boeing what they fined
Thousand Oaks over a single sewage spill, every time they violated their
permit, it would stop tomorrow," Crawford said. In 1998, the regional
water board fined Thousand Oaks $2.3 million for a sewage spill that released
millions of gallons of raw sewage into a creek, damaging crops and eventually
dumping into the Pacific Ocean, closing some beaches for weeks.
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- Officials with the control board say their investigation
and the federal grand jury's investigation are independent of each other.
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- Known as the Rocketdyne test site, the field was used
by Rocketdyne, the Defense Department, NASA and the Energy Department to
conduct rocket, missile and nuclear testing for nearly 50 years.
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- A multi-agency work group was founded in 1989 to help
oversee the test field's $250-million cleanup effort.
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- In 1996, Boeing acquired Rocketdyne. In August, Boeing
sold Rocketdyne to United Technologies for $700 million. The sale included
Rocketdyne's headquarters in Canoga Park but didn't include the test field.
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- The next Santa Susana Field Laboratory meeting will
take place on Wed., Jan. 11 in Simi Valley.
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- http://www.simivalleyacorn.com/news/2005/1216/Front_Page/001.html
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