The Department of Energy’s final environmental study for its share of cleanup at the Santa Susana Field Laboratory is inadequate and does not follow an agreement reached with California in 2010, state officials said this week.
The California Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC) also asked DOE to accept comments on the final environmental impact statement until March 1 before any record of decision (ROD) is published. The final EIS for remediation of Area IV and the Northern Buffer Zone within the 2,850-acre property in Ventura County was announced Dec. 18, and the “abbreviated comment period” that ended Tuesday is insufficient given how different this EIS is from the draft published in 2017, according to a letter to DOE from the state agency.
The DOE preferred option would return the roughly 470-acre area to “open space” for recreation at radiation levels sufficient to protect human health and the environment. While no official date has been set to issue a ROD, it could come within 30 days after the review period closes.
The Energy Department “ignores that its preferred alternative is inconsistent” with the administrative order on consent for remedial action reached between the state and federal agencies in 2010, DTSC Deputy Director Mohsen Nazemi wrote. The negotiated agreement called for soils in Area IV to be returned to “background” contamination levels, but the method laid out in the EIS would leave most contaminated soil in place. The federal assumption that DTSC is open to renegotiating this is “erroneous,” Nazemi wrote.
The 470 acres within SSFL were used by DOE’s Energy Technology Engineering Center (ETEC) for research on nuclear power and liquid metal technology. Boeing and NASA are the other parties responsible for cleanup at Santa Susana.
The Energy Department has said its approach laid out in the final EIS is cost-effective and focused on cleanup of chemical and radioactive hot spots. The DOE plan would remove 38,000 cubic yards of soil, rather than hundreds of thousands of additional cubic yards, much of which it says does not need remediation. The DOE Office of Environmental Management and its contractors “are eager to begin remediation of the site,” an agency spokesperson said Wednesday.
