A contractor for the Department of Energy has finished tearing down the last of 18 buildings at the Energy Technology Engineering Center within the Santa Susana Field Laboratory in Simi Valley, Calif., the agency said this week.
The last of the buildings at the Energy Technology Engineering Center (ETEC), Sodium Pump Test Facility, came down Friday, according to a press release from the DOE Office of Environmental Management. The nine-story industrial building used for testing large pumps for liquid sodium was built in 1972 and last used into the 1980s, DOE said in the release.
Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, all 18 buildings came down in a little more than 15 months, DOE said, adding all of the agency’s 270 original structures have been demolished at ETEC since remediation work began at the site in the 1970s. A bigger effort to remove buildings resumed after DOE operations ceased in 1988, according to the agency.
“This accomplishment was the direct result of an ongoing and successful collaboration with the State of California” and its Department of Toxic Substances Control, DOE’s acting assistant secretary for environmental management, Ike White, said in the release.
The agency recently extended the remediation contractor for the project, Idaho-based North Wind Portage, by two years. In addition to soil and groundwater remediation, rubble from the demolished buildings must still be hauled away to the EnergySolutions disposal site in Clive, Utah. North Wind’s current agreement at the site dates to August 2014.
The DOE leased about 450 acres of the sprawling 2,800-acre Santa Susana property from Boeing and did nuclear energy and related research on the 90-acre ETEC site from the 1950s into the 1980s. The California Department of Toxic Substances Control oversees cleanup efforts at Santa Susana by DOE, Boeing and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
In May 2020, DOE and California reached an agreement over plans for demolishing the last 10 decaying buildings at ETEC. With the buildings down, DOE and the state will now focus their attention on soil and groundwater remediation at the property in Ventura County, according to Monday’s release.
Denise Duffield, associate director of Physicians for Social Responsibility-Los Angeles, said in an email it is “outrageous that DOE keeps issuing news releases about tearing down a few buildings at its contaminated Santa Susana Field Laboratory, when DOE still is refusing to clean up the contaminated soil at the site, as required by a legally binding agreement it signed in 2010.”
