February public hearings scheduled on ETEC soil cleanup

The Department of Energy will hold two February public hearings, one online and one in person, to address soil cleanup plans at its Energy Technology Engineering Center within the Santa Susana Field Laboratory Site in Simi Valley, California.

The virtual public scoping meeting is planned for Feb. 6 and an in-person one Feb. 18, the DOE Office of Environmental Management said in an announcement last week. Times and locations should be announced at least 15 days prior, according to the notice. No meeting details were posted on the DOE website for Santa Susana news as of Monday, Jan. 20.

DOE published a notice of intent Dec. 27 in the Federal Register announcing plans to develop a supplemental environmental impact statement for soil cleanup for parts of the sprawling 2,850-acre California site where a DOE predecessor agency, the Atomic Energy Commission, once had test reactors. The supplemental impact statement, expected in summer 2026, would modify a final statement from to 2017, according to the notice.

Boeing, NASA and DOE are the three parties responsible for cleanup of Santa Susana, under a 2007 consent decree between California and the federal government.

All nuclear materials were removed from DOE’s portion of Santa Susana years ago and in 2021 the agency tore down to ground level the last of the Energy Technology Engineering Center structures. According to a DOE report, up to 4 million cubic feet of soil from Santa Susana could eventually be disposed of at the Nevada National Security Site.