In a community meeting to inform Simi Valley residents of the aftereffects of the September fires, Boeing and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) officials said last week no airborne or ground contaminants extraordinary to fires were released into the environment at the Santa Susana Field Laboratory (SSFL). Critics were skeptical.

The Topanga fire burned about 24,000 acres in eastern Ventura and western Los Angeles counties over eight days in September and early October. At the SSFL, south of Simi Valley and north of Bell Canyon, the fire scorched 2,000 acres of brush and destroyed 10 of the 200 buildings on the property. The cause of the fire is still under investigation.

Art Lenox, Boeing project manager in charge of the SSFL chemical cleanup, told a packed audience the fire released 150 pounds of Freon—from a refrigerator and a heating and ventilation system—into the air, and into the ground small amounts of oil and lubricants—likely a liter or less in quantity—from a machine shop.

Lenox said about two miles of a water treatment pipeline also burned, releasing a “pretty low” concentration of contaminated water into the ground. In addition, a couple of the destroyed buildings were old enough for Boeing officials to suspect they contained asbestos. The aerospace company, which bought the rocket testing facility from Rocketdyne in the 1990s, will be sending the burned materials and debris to a disposal facility licensed to accept such waste, Lenox said.

“(The fire) didn’t deter us or slow us down . . . in doing our cleanup. . . . We’re still moving forward,” he said.

To assess the contamination of trichloroethylene (TCE), Boeing recently placed two drilling rigs on the site to core down to depths of 800 feet. They’ll send the rock samples to a lab to be analyzed. TCE was used as an industrial solvent at the SSFL from the 1950s to 1993.

Boeing said analysis of ash samples in the wake of the fire showed no radiological contaminants above the cleanup standards. And air samples taken before, during and after the Topanga fire found no airborne release of man-made radiological contaminants. However, fires naturally release chemicals, such as carbon dioxide, and the ash may contain heavy metals and hazardous chemicals, such as benzene, formaldehyde, dioxins and others.

Daniel Hirsch, president of the nuclear watchdog group Committee to Bridge the Gap, called the meeting a “dog and pony show.”

Boeing’s claim the fire didn’t create a problem “just isn’t credible,” Hirsch said.

He said the company has a history of not being forthright with the public and that large amounts of radioactive and chemical contaminants in surface soil and vegetation means “it’s not possible to have a fire that doesn’t release those materials.”

Hirsch said the DOE historically has allowed Boeing to pull the wool over the eyes of the public. He challenges the DOE’s reliability in view of the fact that the department is self-regulated and operates Area IV, a nuclear reactor program at SSFL that had reactor accidents in 1959, 1964 and 1969 that they’ve chosen not to clean up.

Field testing of SSFL revealed that levels of tritium, a radioactive isotope that turns to water when exposed to oxygen, are six times higher than what’s considered acceptable, Hirsch said. The chemical has a halflife of 12 years, meaning tritium will be three times higher than what’s considered acceptable 12 years from now. It was widely used in the mid-1950s to early 1960s in above-ground nuclear testing.

And Hirsch said that’s dependent on the assumption that they’ve found the hottest spot where the chemical occurs at the site.

The highest concentration of tritium occurs in the area around Building 10, which was demolished in 1978. According to Boeing, tritium has stayed close to the building because fractures in the rock below the ground surface act as a maze to slow the water from traveling downhill.

Boeing said water wells dug closest to Building 10 show the highest concentration of tritium is above the water table. Wells dug further away from the building show the highest concentration of tritium is below the water table.

Hirsch said Building 10 may be one of the buildings in which the 1964 DOE reactor accident occurred.

Boeing officials said the company will continue to monitor groundwater wells and install additional ones and analyze the rock core to determine the extent of tritium in groundwater.

Ventura County Supervisor Linda Parks isn’t happy that the SSFL polluters are the ones responsible for cleaning up the site.

“Relying on the polluter to be the one to let us know of the air quality doesn’t sit well with me,” Parks said.

She said the Ventura County Air Pollution Control District (VCAPCD) needs more sophisticated air monitoring equipment because they currently don’t have the equipment to test for all of the airborne chemicals used by Boeing.

Parks sits on the board of directors for the VCAPCD and the county fire district.

Hirsch said at this point the most important problem is that SSFL contaminants aren’t being cleaned up. At issue are the standards used by the DOE, which are arguably less stringent than the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, he said.

Mike Lopez, DOE project manager, said the cleanup of SSFL is in accordance with their higher standard of urban and residential use. After the DOE cleanup is completed, “one could live there,” Lopez said

The Committee to Bridge the Gap is among the groups suing the DOE over the cleanup of SSFL. Hirsch said the lawsuit currently is in pretrial phase.