Nearly two years after it said the complexity of remediating the Santa Susana Field Laboratory was responsible for missed cleanup deadlines, the California Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC) has still not published two key environmental reports
In its summary of June activity at the 2,850-acre chemically and radioactively contaminated site in Ventura County, the state agency said it is finishing its response to public comments collected by December 2017 on both the draft Program Environmental Impact Report (PEIR) and the draft Program Management Plan (PMP). The environmental report will inform the public about site contamination, and the management plan will provide a roadmap for remediation.
The state expects to issue the finished PEIR later this year and then have the parties responsible for remediation at Santa Susana – Boeing, NASA, and the U.S. Department of Energy – develop their draft cleanup decision documents detailing how they will conduct the work. After these decision documents are issued for public comment and subsequently finalized, remaining remediation would begin.
The parties have already torn down many structures at SSFL. The final cleanup of contaminated soil, which accounts for much of the remaining work, is likely to take 15 years, according to the state.
A 2007 consent order originally called for remediation of contaminated soil to largely done by mid-2017. But a separate 2010 administrative consent order between the state and the three responsible parties stipulated the major soil cleanup should wait for completion of the environmental reports.
The Energy Department is responsible for soil remediation within 470 acres of the SSFL property, located 30 miles northwest of downtown Los Angeles.
In December 2018, DOE released its environmental impact statement for tearing down remaining buildings and cleaning up soil in Area IV and the Northern Buffer Zone at Santa Susana. For decades, DOE’s former Energy Technology Engineering Center did research on liquid metal technology that contributed to contamination in these areas of SSFL. Critics say the federal environmental plan does not go far enough.
