News Coverage
Aerojet working on sites polluted with perchlorate
EPA says up to 200 years needed to save tainted wells in California
Published February 1, 2004
The task of making sure toxic rocket fuel contamination doesn't end up in south Arkansas' drinking water now belongs to a defense contractor that polluted dozens of wells in California with the same chemical.
Aerojet, which manufactures missile and space propulsion components, such as rocket motors and spacecraft thrusters, paid $ 133 million in October to buy almost all the assets of Atlantic Research Corp., including the company's facility near East Camden.
The newly acquired site is contaminated with perchlorate - an oxidizer in rocket fuel that has been linked to thyroid disorders and birth defects. Atlantic had begun to clean up its site in Arkansas only during the past year, leaving the bulk of the work to Aerojet.
Ultimately, state regulators say, the company must make sure that perchlorate doesn't reach the Sparta aquifer, which provides drinking water to tens of thousands of Arkansans and supports the state's agriculture industry.
Then, there's California, where two of Aerojet's facilities are listed among the nation's worst hazardous waste sites and are contaminated with a toxic soup of chemicals, including perchlorate, used in the rocket manufacturing process.
At both Aerojet's Rancho Cordova facility near Sacramento and its San Gabriel Valley plant, the chemicals seeped into public water wells, prompting health officials to close them indefinitely.
In fact, the contamination is so widespread at the Rancho Cordova facility that Environmental Protection Agency officials estimated it would take more than 200 years to clean it up.
Such a calculation staggered many environmental groups and California residents who, for the past 20 years, have accused Aerojet of being too slow to remove its toxic leftovers.
"They have a very poor track record in terms of making really big messes and taking a really long time to clean them up," said Renee Sharp with the Environmental Working Group, a national environmental organization that is documenting perchlorate contamination across the nation.
Several Rancho Cordova residents and the utilities that provide them water have sued Aerojet, alleging that the company knowingly skirted several environmental protection laws and conspired to conceal the extent of the contamination.
While Aerojet has settled some of those lawsuits, the company has vigorously defended itself against others, touting its environmental research and efforts to reach out to communities where they do business. In fact, many environmental regulators concede that Aerojet is responsible for pioneering much of the technology that is used today to clean up perchlorate.
"I can tell you that Aerojet has a long history of cleanup and remediation at our California sites and certainly have no intention of slowing down or stopping the current processes that are ongoing at the Atlantic site," said Linda Cutler, vice president of corporate communications for GenCorp, Aerojet's parent company.
State environmental regulators say they are aware of Aerojet's record and they don't believe the company will slow the cleanup effort in south Arkansas.
"They have not been defiant," Kern said of Aerojet officials. "It's a matter of being cooperative, and they have proven that they are. Our statute talks about environmental compliance. ... It's not about how much civil litigation is out there."
CALIFORNIA WOES
Aerojet began manufacturing rockets at its Rancho Cordova facility in 1953, just as the Cold War was escalating the demand for new, more sophisticated weapons.
Soon after Aerojet started, federal environmental regulators say the company began dumping dud rocket fuel and other manufacturing waste into unlined pits and trenches near the plants. Years later, the company began burning the propellant and drums of solvents.
In 1955, a regional water pollution board found perchlorate in massive quantities in local wells, yet little was done to force the company to change its disposal practices until 1979. That's when environmental regulators discovered perchlorate and other chemicals used in Aerojet's manufacturing process in Rancho Cordova wells and later in the nearby American River.
At that point the EPA intervened, ordering Aerojet to clean up the mess it had created. The company did so by pumping out the contaminated groundwater, treating it for a handful of chemicals and injecting it back into the aquifer.
Federal environmental regulators say the process only made the contamination worse because the water was still tainted with chemicals, including perchlorate.
Not long after that, many Rancho Cordova residents claimed the chemicals in the water were making them sick, causing tumors, cancer, birth defects and other maladies.
Prompted by those concerns, California health officials began to investigate the health problems. In 1997, a new method was developed to detect perchlorate in very low levels; it was only then that the extent of Aerojet's pollution became known.
Though the rash of Rancho Cordova illnesses were never directly linked to Aerojet's perchlorate problems, California health officials were worried and added the chemical to a list of contaminants it routinely checks for in drinking water.
"That's really the most important thing now, getting replacement water," said Becky Thill, co-founder of a Rancho Cordova watchdog group. "But there's not a lot we can do other than wait."
Several regional water providers whose wells were contaminated by Aerojet sued the company and the state of California, arguing that the two had maintained a "secrecy pact" for almost 20 years to keep residents in the dark about the level of the groundwater contamination.
The state paid $ 2.4 million to the water purveyors to settle the lawsuit, and Aerojet recently agreed to pay Sacramento County almost $ 25 million for replacement water, compensating residents for the wells closed because of perchlorate contamination.
In all, perchlorate has been discovered in about 85 public water systems in California, mostly located near Los Angeles, San Bernardino and Riverside. The source? Mostly defense contractors and the military, EPA officials say. Many of the contaminated wells have been shut down, forcing thousands of Californians to find alternative sources of drinking water.
Aerojet is spending millions of dollars to clean up its Rancho Cordova facility and its original plant in Azusa in southern California. Both have been declared Superfund sites by the EPA.
Company officials acknowledge the pollutants must be removed, but they also point out that residents are being protected.
"I think the thing to keep in mind is that there is no polluted water being served to anyone," Cutler said. "The water purveyors have been very aggressive in testing their wells, making sure everything is safe."
AEROJET IN ARKANSAS
With the acquisition of Atlantic, Aerojet becomes the second leading provider in the space propulsion marketplace, providing thrusters for rockets sent to space and warheads used in current military operations.
In October, GenCorp and Aerojet officials visited the East Camden plant for the first time to check out their newest investment.
Cutler, who was among the visitors, said Aerojet officials were impressed with their new Arkansas employees as well as the site itself.
She explained that Atlantic's environmental engineers told them that thick layers of clay underneath the site's surface should prevent the perchlorate from contaminating local drinking water supplies, significantly easing future cleanup burdens on Aerojet. Arkansas environmental regulators say they intend to hold the company to the same deadlines imposed on Atlantic, which includes coming up with a formal cleanup plan by 2005.
Aerojet officials, in turn, say they are committed to completing the task and have discussed installing additional monitoring wells on-site, but haven't committed to an action plan.
"We know that Atlantic Research folks have been working closely with the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality and have submitted a plan," Cutler said. "Our assessment is that they are right on track and doing the right thing." Aerojet officials also say they want to answer any questions residents might have about the perchlorate contamination in East Camden - something some Woodbury residents complained Atlantic wasn't always willing to do.
Larry Ladd, who once served on Aerojet's community advisory group in Rancho Cordova, said East Camden residents shouldn't expect much.
"Aerojet drags its feet for as long as it can and plays the system for all it's worth," said Ladd, a Rancho Cordova geographer. "When the media spotlight is on, they say in front of the camera, 'We're doing this and this, have spent a bazillion dollars, everything is under control of our super competent scientists, etc.' "Once the camera is off, Aerojet and the politicians let things slide."
FLUSHING OUT THE AQUIFER
When Aerojet's facility in Rancho Cordova was declared a Superfund site in 1982, EPA officials said it would take more than $ 1 billion and more than two centuries to clean it up.
"That is just absolutely astounding," said Sharp, who has co-authored two perchlorate reports for the Environmental Working Group. "I'm not aware of any other kind of cleanup with that kind of time frame."
As technology improved, the EPA shaved a century from its prediction, an estimate that Aerojet still refutes.
"That [original estimate] would be comparable to saying the technology that was around in 1800 will still be used today," Cutler said. "We don't think that's a very productive projection."
Instead, Cutler says, the company thinks it can remediate the most polluted part of the Rancho Cordova site - about one third of the property - within 30 years for about $ 60 million to $ 70 million.
She credits the reduced time frame to advances in technology, some of which Aerojet patented.
For example, Aerojet designed and built the world's first above-ground treatment facility at Rancho Cordova to remove perchlorate from groundwater in 1998.
"We understand any frustration that may exist because of the amount of time it's taking," Cutler said. "But this is an enormous project, and we are really learning as we go. But we continue to improve the technology and feel certain that we will get the job done much sooner than we originally anticipated." At Aerojet's Rancho Cordova site, however, a cleanup plan is in place for only one quarter of the area, says Charles Berrey, EPA's site project manager.
Aerojet has argued it may not be responsible for the all of the contamination at the site, placing the blame on local orchard growers who use Chilean fertilizer, which contains perchlorate. Berrey said recently that EPA intends to file a legal rebuttal to Aerojet's assertion, a move that will likely delay progress at the site even further. Kevin Mayer, who tracks perchlorate for EPA in California, said cleanup delays are common occurrences at Aerojet facilities.
"No one disputes that Aerojet possesses the technical knowhow to solve the problems it has caused," Mayer said.
"Yes, Aerojet is actively involved in remediation," he added. "They're just not getting a whole lot done right now."