The Santa Susana Field Laboratory poses a unique challenge for the
people of Southern California.
It is the only site in the world to have had an uncontained nuclear meltdown, suffered numerous other nuclear accidents, six decades of open-air rocket research, and has been the focus of two federal investigations related to Boeing’s environmental crimes. Information about the site was not disclosed to the public, and the cities of Los Angeles and Simi Valley built right up to its borders; its wastes leak directly into our surrounding communities.
The site has employed the most dangerous substances known to man, and was a “field lab” in order to handle the most exotic fuels and nuclear experiments science could design. Because of this lack of disclosure, the citizens around Rocketdyne find themselves in a potentially dangerous situation.
This is why RocketdyneWatch was created.
The Santa Susana Field Laboratory (SSFL)
The Santa Susana Field Laboratory (SSFL) is a 2,850 acre site located in the Santa Susana Mountain Range and Simi Hills between the Simi and San Fernando Valleys in southeastern Ventura County, California. The field lab’s eastern boundary lies directly adjacent to the Los Angeles, Ventura County line. The property is divided into four areas. The different areas were designed to house different activities; however we are going to mostly emphasize the activities that took place in area IV which contains the Energy Technology Engineering Center (ETEC).
In 1947, the Atomics International unit of Rockwell International’s Canoga Park-based Rocketdyne Division developed and operated a wide array of experimental nuclear facilities in addition to rocket engine test stands. An estimated 30,000 open-air rocket tests were conducted at the site, supporting the space program behind the Mercury, Apollo, and the Space Shuttle Main Engine Program, among others. The SSFL has also been home for six decades to various programs by NASA, the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE).
On July 12, 1957, one of the experimental nuclear facilities at the site, known as the Sodium Reactor Experiment or SRE, generated the first power from a civilian nuclear reactor. Southern California Edison bought the electricity generated by the sodium-graphite reactor and used the power generated by it to provide for the energy needs of the City of Moorpark. This reactor among others was part of the Atomic Energy Commission’s (AEC) Five-Year Reactor Development Program which started in the mid 1950s.
On July 26, 1959, technicians barely managed to manually shut down the SRE when temperature and radiation readings sky-rocketed. After two hours of basic inspections, they decided to restart the reactor. The reactor continued to run for about two more weeks before the radiation levels and other signs of trouble increased so much that they decided to shut the reactor down in order to investigate and find out what really had gone wrong. When they dropped a camera into the reactor core, they discovered that 13 of 43 fuel rods, or about 1/3 of the radioactive uranium-carbide fuel, was damaged and partially melted.
The Sodium Reactor Experiment at the Santa Susana Field Laboratory was about 1/100 the size of the Three Mile Island Nuclear accident; however it was far worse since the SSFL did not have a containment structure, as did the Three Mile Island Reactor. The SRE was built in a normal industrial building designed to vent out radioactive gasses such as iodine-131 into holding tanks which later released their contents into the environment.
In 1989 it was discovered by the community that a meltdown had occurred at the site; the public brought the information forward to their elected officials and the Santa Susana Field Laboratory Interagency Workgroup was formed, in order to coordinate the investigation and cleanup activities at the site, and to provide information to the public.
Information on the site has not always been easy to obtain. As late as 1989, the City of Los Angeles, the State Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC), the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board (RWQCB) and the California Department of Health Services (DHS) had no idea of the radioactive contamination at the site, the full extent of the contamination, nor the health threat it posed to surrounding communities.
“We have been kept in the dark all along and I don’t know what to say,” stated Hank Yacoub from the Regional Water Board in 1989, about their learning of the radioactive contamination at the site.
In 1995 there was an explosion at the site that killed two of the SSFL’s scientists and maimed a third. An FBI raid and investigation disclosed that the SSFL officials had ordered the scientists to illegally burn hazardous and radioactive waste in open air pits. This resulted in the largest environmental fine levied in the State of California in 1996.
In 1996, Rockwell International sold its aerospace and defense business, including the Santa Susana Field Laboratory, to Boeing, who presently owns and operates the SSFL. On August 3, 2005, United Technologies, the parent company of Pratt & Whitney, purchased Boeing's Rocketdyne Propulsion & Power division; they would not accept the SSFL as part of the purchase and Boeing owns the field lab to this day.
The contamination at the site is of great concern. In addition to the meltdown’s radionuclides that were released into the environment, chemicals used during rocket engine testing at the site including trichloroethylene (TCE), perchlorate, hydrazine, mercury, lead, dioxins, and hundreds of other contaminants were found to have seeped into the environment.
The U.S. EPA was brought in to supervise the cleanup; EPA’s health standards are the most protective of any agency. In 2001 the Department of Energy broke a 16-year promise to abide by EPA regulations. Instead they are applying their own standards in the nuclear cleanup, which will allow 99% of the radioactive contamination to remain behind.
Various lawsuits have been leveled at the SSFL, most resulting in settlements and sealed cases. One of the more recent lawsuits was a class-action lawsuit aimed at Boeing by the attorneys of Cappello & Noel LLP. We recommend that you check out their trial declaration which outlines the activities of the SSFL as “Ultra Hazardous.”
In 2004, Ventura County Supervisor Linda Parks generated a law creating a two-mile testing radius that required developers to test for contaminants linked to SSFL activities.
Since then, perchlorate has been found at Centex Homes’ Dayton Creek Sterling Homes project in a creek bed at over 11 million times the safety level for drinking water, and Strontium-90 was detected at hundreds of times the background levels at Runkle Ranch, a proposed housing development just downstream of the SSFL’s nuclear site.
It was the citizens who insisted, and L.A. City Councilmember Greig Smith agreed, that the City of Los Angeles require the tests which detected this perchlorate at the Dayton Creek/ Sterling Homes property. This is why your participation in this matter is critical.
Recently, in the fall of 2005, the Santa Susana Field Lab was swept by wildfire that destroyed 90% of the site and burned down 10 buildings, despite the fact that over 1,500 fire fighters were in the immediate vicinity. Seven months later, air monitoring data from the fire has still not been made available to the public from Boeing. Concerns from firefighters have lead to limited health surveys, and questions about the fire and potential public exposure still abound.
On February 2, 2006, UCLA released a Community Health Study Report that indicates that exposures to contamination and the incidences of a wide variety of cancers are greatly increased as one nears the site. Further work needs to be done to fully outline the risks posed by this site.
Boeing’s Santa Susana Field Laboratory is currently under a federal investigation for chronic, criminal wastewater violations. After petitioning the State Water Resources Board for a stay on their NPDES Wastewater Permit, the Board, incomprehensibly, awarded Boeing a temporary waiver. When State Senator Sheila Kuehl and community groups (PSR, NRDC, CBG and private citizens) exerted tremendous pressure, the decision was rescinded in May 2006.
Nonetheless, Boeing is still challenging the very precepts of the Clean Water Act by trying to get their pollution regulations relaxed.
RocketdyneWatch.org just checked with the State Water Board and the public hearing in Sacramento on this critically important matter has been moved to January 2007. STAY TUNED TO ROCKETDYNEWATCH.ORG FOR STATE WATER BOARD MEETING INFORMATION AND UPDATES!
Maureen Gorsen: One of our core community members, Sue Boecker, did a little research on the head of the DTSC, Ms. Maureen Gorsen, and found that until Governor Schwarzenegger's appointment of her in November 2003, Ms. Gorsen was a partner in the law firm Weston, Benshoof, Rubalcava et al.
Weston Benshoof is the law firm who is currently representing Boeing in their quest to have the Clean Water Act repealed by asking for relief from their NPDES wastewater permit. This seeming scandal is outlined
on our front page. Click Here for the full story.
Area I Burn Pit: The latest debacle in the investigation and cleanup of this site is the Area I Burn Pit Interim Cleanup Plan, which was brought to the attention of the public in mid-July 2006. Initially DTSC had not intended holding a full public hearing: we were told that we had two weeks to review the document and submit written comments. Mary Wiesbrock of Save Open Spaces, one of our core community leaders, discovered on our RocketdyneWatch database declarations from Rocketdyne firemen attesting to secret night burnings of "ultrahazardous" wastes in order to save time and money. Materials listed as having been burned include radioactive hot lab canisters, napalm, and hundreds of other nuclear and toxic chemicals, in the midst of our neighborhoods.
DTSC's Interim Cleanup Plan did not include comprehensive testing for nuclear material; Ms. Wiesbrock brought these documents to DTSC, proving that Boeing had clearly misrepresented the activities at the burn pit by not disclosing this information prior to DTSC's approval of their Cleanup Plan.
As a result of new DTSC inquiries, Boeing submitted documents that shows that up until the 1990s thousands of pounds of unmarked waste products from Boeing/ Rocketdyne's three nuclear facilities were indeed
burned at the Area I Burn Pit.
This is a profoundly different picture from that which Boeing painted for the regulators this past summer; DTSC, without any due diligence, had merely accepted Boeing's word about the activities of the Area I Burn Pit and had arbitrarily decided that the public did not need to have a public meeting to address their concerns.
Our community raised an outcry, however, and on August 31, 2006 DTSC held a public meeting in which they explained their decision to call off the interim cleanup plan and instead launch a full investigation of the Area I Burn Pit.
We are told that DTSC will hold a meeting in November 2006 to discuss the public's concerns and their next steps. STAY TUNED FOR MORE INFORMATION!
It is highly likely that radioactive dust would currently be floating around the community's surrounding the SSFL, had it not been for a private citizen.
This leaves the community in the vulnerable position of having our health and environment at the disposal of a regulatory agency that clearly has no comprehensive idea of the activities at this site, nor the extent of its nuclear and chemical contamination -- and the polluter, one of the world's largest corporations, who proves on a daily basis that their sole interests are to minimize the cleanup, minimize their losses, fight all regulation, and unload this site for unrestricted use.
Three questions remain:
1. Why does the community know more about this site than the regulators?
2. Why did DTSC not know the full extent of the dangers of the Area I Burn Pit?
3. Why did Boeing not disclose this information up front, thereby exposing the citizens of Los Angeles and Ventura Counties
to likely nuclear contamination?
Los Angeles Board of Supervisors:
These questions must have occurred to the Los Angeles Board of Supervisors, because immediately upon hearing of the release of this critical new data, Supervisor Michael Antonovich recommended and the board agreed to launch a county investigation to come up with solutions to help protect the citizens of Los Angeles County from the activities at the SSFL.
In late September 2006, the county report will be made public, and you will have a chance to make your recommendations to the Board of Supervisors about what steps they need to take to secure our health and safety.
Of additional concern to the community is the fact that Boeing self-monitors: all air, groundwater, soil, and surface runoff is collected, tested, and reported by the very entity being regulated. Rocketdyne/ Boeing has been known to run their tests in such a way to minimize pollution detection; thus the community has from the beginning had distrust of the site data. The current layout of political and regulatory jurisdictions seems inadequate to investigate the contamination on and off site, and regulating it in such a way as to protect our long term health and environment.
Looking at recent Pentagon contracts, there are signs that Boeing and NASA might reawaken their nuclear “energy” research program up at the SSFL: this must not be allowed to happen.
We have been actively trying to obtain the nuclear materials handling licenses for the SSFL as well as the De Soto and Canoga Park facilities. These licenses will help our community as well as the regulatory agencies understand what is actually going on in our community, and why we are so concerned about the activities at each of these sites.
Unfortunately the California Department of Health Services who holds and grants the licenses for nuclear work, denied our request to obtain this information, citing California Government Code section 6255, which allows for the witholding of a record under the California Public Records Act when, on the facts of a particular case, the public interest served by not making the record public clearly outweighs the public interest served by disclosure of the record.
This is why RocketdyneWatch was created: to help the public learn what happened up on “The Hill.” We have provided in this website as much information as the community has so that we all can work towards a protective investigation and cleanup of the site.
Public involvement is critical: we urge you to look at the Calendar of Events and make plans to attend a Rocketdyne meeting to educate yourself, and to speak your mind!
If you have any other factual, important information about the Santa Susana Field Laboratory, please visit our “Submit Data” page.
Documents available on this website have been released to the public.
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