U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry on Tuesday committed to explaining the missed 2017 deadline to complete environmental remediation at his agency’s portion of the Santa Susana Field Laboratory in California.
The Energy Department is one of three parties, with Boeing and NASA, responsible for cleanup of the former 2,850-acre rocket testing and nuclear research complex in Ventura County. In a 2010 administrative order on consent with the state, DOE committed to finishing its work by 2017, Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Calif.) reminded Perry during a hearing of the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee.
“But to date no meaningful cleanup has occurred at all,” Sherman said. “So you’re supposed to be completed by 2017, you haven’t started by 2019, will you come to the San Fernando Valley and explain to people when this site will be fully cleaned up?”
Perry said he would: “Mr. Sherman, I would be more than happy to accompany you and try to explain. Well, I’ll do my best to explain what happened the seven years before I got here and why there wasn’t; any progress made on that.”
The Energy Department is tasked with soil removal, building demolition, and groundwater treatment in Area IV and the Northern Buffer Zone at Santa Susana.
For the upcoming 2020 federal fiscal year, DOE’s Office of Environmental Management has requested just shy of $18.2 million for cleanup activities at the Energy Technology Engineering Center at Santa Susana. That would be a $7.2 million boost from the enacted level for fiscal 2019, which ends on Sept. 30.
The agency in fiscal 2019 expects to issue the final environmental impact statement and record of decision on its preferred approach for cleanup at Santa Susana. Planning would continue through the year, with decontamination and decommissioning beginning in fiscal 2020.
