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 portion of the 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. The 470 acres includes the agency’s Energy Technology Engineering Center, which hosted nuclear power-related research from the mid-1960s until 1988.
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 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 record of decision on its preferred approach for remediation at Santa Susana. The Energy Department issued an environmental impact statement (EIS) in December for tearing down remaining buildings and cleaning up soil and groundwater at the site.
The Energy Department said it would remove 38,000 cubic yards of soil, rather than removing hundreds of thousands of additional cubic yards, much of which it says does not really need remediation.
But the state of California and the Physicians for Social Responsibility-Los Angeles say the federal agency’s EIS falls short of prior commitments it made to the state in 2007 and 2010.
During the hearing, Perry said studies done by the Energy Department since the consent agreements were reached with California, indicate contamination was not as extensive as previously thought. He also told Rep. Katie Hill (D-Calif.) final cleanup is still being discussed with California officials, and will protect the environment.
A fiscal 2020 spending package passed by the House last month says DOE should comply with the prior consent decrees that suggested the SSFL site would be restored to background radiation levels.
The House appropriations bill does not appear to list an individual Santa Susana line item, but money for non-defense environmental cleanup of “small sites,” including DOE’s portion of SSFL, would dip from $131 million in fiscal 2019 to $127 million in fiscal 2020. That is near double the $66 million the White House request
The Senate Appropriations Committee has yet to release any fiscal 2020 legislation.
Planning would continue through the year, with decontamination and decommissioning beginning in fiscal 2020, according to the Energy Department in its budget proposal. The agency plans to use conventional demolition methods to take down about a half-dozen remaining structures at the Hazardous Waste Management Facility and the Radioactive Materials Handling Facility, under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act.
The state Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC) is still preparing comments on the DOE draft closure plans under RCRA. It plans to issue its final program environmental impact report, which assesses cleanup alternatives, later this year.
