by Carmi Orenstein, Editor, The Networker

Small victories. As an activist and public health researcher within the environmental and climate movements, I celebrate these, and—momentarily—suspend my sharp focus on the full ecological, health, and justice implications of the problems they touch. I am not an incrementalist, but I am committed to honoring the successes of collective, steadfast work.

The celebration has special resonance when an unlikely win happens in the place where I grew up—on the western edge of Los Angeles County, California where secretive, Cold War-era nuclear reactors and rocket-testing operations have spread chemical and radioactive contamination.

In its October 19, 2023 public meeting, the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board—one of nine regional governmental California boards tasked with protecting water—shocked environmental and health advocates in the room. After years of unsatisfactory activity, the Board voted unanimously to restore several previous effluent limits and to add new ones in its renewal of the five-year National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permit for runoff from the highly contaminated Santa Susana Field Lab (SSFL).

These permits are issued to the Boeing Corporation, which now owns 80 percent of this site that from 1949 to 2006 variously ran research, development, and testing of rocket engines, nuclear reactors, and liquid metals. The permits apply to the allowable discharge of 187 million gallons per day of stormwater runoff and treated groundwater from the 2,800-acre site.

In other words, the Board agreed, after listening to the community, to tighten up what is allowed to flow off the site in the stormwater.

This outcome felt unprecedented in the context of a madly frustrating, decades-long chronicle of regulatory delay, outsized industry influence, and abject absence of a comprehensive cleanup of the heavily contaminated site, around which 700,000 people live now live within ten miles. For many decades, leaks, egregious accidents, and deliberate releases just kept happening. Following a partial nuclear meltdown in 1959, uncontained nuclear reactors spewed radioactivity, radioactive and toxic wastes were burned in open pits, and countless hazardous chemicals leached into soil, groundwater, and surface water on and around the site. (See our previous articles on SSFL here and here.) Climate change-fueled fire and torrential rainstorms—along with a lack of regulations that could have anticipated them—spread the contamination further, and further complicate the story.

Co-founder of Parents Against SSFL, Melissa Bumstead, a long-standing critic of the do-nothing approach to the ongoing toxic threat of the SSFL who has participated in countless public hearings and meetings convened by multiple agencies, offered sincere praise, saying this to the Board about what transpired at the meeting last October:

[O]ur community has not been listened to by a government agency for a very long time… We had assumed that the fight was over for us and that we would just have to keep suffering. So, I commend you for your bravery, and your commitment to protect us from contaminants in our water.

Alongside this gratitude, Bumstead recognizes the vote outcome is a small step in redressing the profound, ongoing risks to water quality created by the SSFL and corporate and governmental inaction. Many other commendable, brave votes must follow this one.

Another longstanding SSFL watchdog, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), also commended what they called “microsteps up a mountain.” And, they issued a warning:

While these were unexpectedly welcome developments, the overall benefits remain murky…. Unless we win these larger battles, these communities will continue to suffer while Boeing will be able to wipe this huge liability off its ledgers altogether, leaving this toxic legacy for future generations to address.

And yet, the win was a direct one for PEER, which had recently put a spotlight on two types of chemicals likely leaching out of the site: per- and polyfluorinated Substances (PFAS) and polychlorinated biphenyl compounds (PCBs). PFAS and PCBS are the pollutants for which the renewed permit will now require monitoring, at two different outfalls. (Outfalls are the primary drainages where measurements take place in accordance with the permits.)

In the month prior to the meeting, PEER released information about these ultra-dangerous chemicals, which were, until now entirely ignored in Boeing’s stormwater permits. (PFAS were not addressed at all in the permits, and appropriate detection methods were not in place for PCBs, though discharges are technically prohibited.)

About PFAS, PEER wrote, “PFAS contamination has become a major public health concern in California, the nation, and across the globe but has been ignored at one of the nation’s most polluted sites sitting at the headwaters of the LA River…” They pointed out that NASA—which, along with the Department of Energy, owns the other 20 percent of the site—had written about the presence of PFAS in a 2021 report and recommended further investigation. And yet, that never happened.

To be clear, Boeing holds the permits for all the outfalls at the SSFL, so all the water that runs off the site is entirely its responsibility.

PEER’s concern about highly carcinogenic PCBs arose from the fact that the compounds have been banned for decades, were used in SSFL activities historically, are present in SSFL soils, and because of SSFL’s location at the headwaters of the Los Angeles River. While PCB contamination of the River is well-documented, no agency has done the work to confirm the link to SSFL: “Fifty miles away at its mouth, the L.A. River has levels of PCBs 100 times the health limit …. During decades of rocket testing and other military research at Santa Susana PCBs were often used and no other source for that quantity of PCBs has been identified.”

But the Board did more than lift the curtain of denial about PCBs and PFAS. They also restored effluent limits for sulfate, antimony, nickel, selenium, thallium, and dioxins—which had all been cut in the previous permit. Further, Boeing must immediately study groundwater infiltration of contaminants from two unlined collection “ponds” on the site, and do so within one year.

This is a brief glimpse into a small victory in the fight to hold Boeing and the responsible agencies accountable for a tremendously wide-ranging set of water contamination problems and risks. For example, Parents Against SSFL notes 314 historically documented chemicals of concern at SSFL, with only 33 currently addressed by the NPDES permit.

So while many of us mark this progress, we keep eyes wide open to the alarming environmental and health risks that SSFL continues to pose. The struggle for comprehensive monitoring and cleanup at the site brings new quagmires daily, it seems.

In late January 2024, the state’s Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC)—the now-lead agency on the cleanup whose relationship with Boeing has been highly problematic for the community—was set to begin an “emergency project.” DTSC indicated this emergency declaration was in order to prevent “clear and imminent threats” posed by 15,408 cubic yards of heavily contaminated soil including radioactive components. Parents Against SSFL and others have long advocated for a comprehensive cleanup of this “burn pit” area and the whole site, and seen start dates set back or agreements altered repeatedly over the years by various Boeing-influenced decisions. They naturally have questions about this sudden development, as does outside expert Dan Hirsch, who suspects that “weak toxic clean-up standards” are in effect for the project.

This development, enabled by the state’s emergency declaration, precludes most public involvement: it exempts the project from a full review under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). CEQA is “intended to inform government decisionmakers and the public about the potential environmental effects of proposed activities and to prevent significant, avoidable environmental damage.”

Just as the suspect plan to remove and transport the soil from this infamous 5.8-acre burn pit— contaminated since the 1960s and presently covered with tarps (see photo)—was set to begin, one of the most drenching storms in Southern California’s history arrived.

Area 1 Burn Pit, Santa Susana Field Lab, November 17, 2022, SSFL Surface Water Expert Panel Site Tour, photo by the author.

It brought somewhere between 6 and 11 inches of rain to SFFL and with it, questions and fears about the volume and nature of the contamination that the stormwater crossing the site was releasing. These concerns are compounded by the fact that Boeing has previously been relieved by the Board of violations to its effluent permits “caused by unanticipated, grave natural disaster.”

Community members wondered about the status of the emergency project; there was no public notice of how the torrential rain was impacting it. By means of Parents Against SSFL’s online discussion group, I ultimately learned that one member heard back from a personal inquiry to the DTSC liaison: “Due to the rain, excavation field work for the Area 1 Burn Pit is scheduled to start on February 20, 2024.”

And the status of the new stormwater permit, the good news from October? Not surprising: Boeing is petitioning the State Water Resources Control Board to review it, claiming that they, Boeing, “will be subject to improper and inappropriate waste discharge requirements.” But the community won’t give up that small victory easily.

Many more victories must take place before there are meaningful protections of current and future generations surrounding SSFL. But being heard and seeing action taken is wind in the sails of those who understand that water is life, and that no corporation or government agency has the right to contaminate it, and evade responsibility.

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