Reuters, Gina Keating
Published June 30, 2003
Aerospace giant Boeing Co. has been ordered to find out if a rocket fuel component from a field laboratory in Southern California contaminated a well about a mile away, a spokesman for the state Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC) said recently.
Perchlorate, a component in solid rocket fuel, was detected in a February water sample from a well at the Brandeis-Bardin Institute, a Jewish school about a mile north of the Santa Susana Field Laboratory run by Rocketdyne, a Boeing unit.
DTSC spokesman Ron Baker said that since the agency began testing in the late 1990s, these samples were the first to show that perchlorate could be migrating from the Rocketdyne lab.
"They (Boeing) have been saying for some time that the underground structure ... forms a barrier and stops materials from migrating," he said. "We are saying that is just a premise."
Rocketdyne has been testing and building rocket engines at the Santa Susana facility, about 15 miles northwest of Los Angeles, for about 50 years, Boeing spokesman Dan Beck said. The company, which has spent about $200 million cleaning up contaminants at the site since the late 1980s, denied that the perchlorate came from its property.
"We do have perchlorate contamination on the site that we do feel is contained on-site," Beck said. "We are not convinced that perchlorate contamination is a result of the Rocketdyne facility. We have numerous wells for testing ground water around our site, and we check them for all these possible contaminants."
So far, Beck said, those tests have not detected the presence of perchlorate. "This (DTSC) finding is inconsistent with the sampling at this site," he said. "It is a little bit mysterious to us, so we are going to cooperate with those agencies to get some answers."
Can Cause Tumors, Disabilities
Perchlorate is an oxidizing agent that reacts with other substances, causing them to burn. It is used in the space shuttle's solid rocket boosters, fireworks, road flares, and some fertilizers, Beck said.
But the substance, which can be naturally occurring or manufactured, also interferes with iodide uptake in the thyroid gland, potentially causing tumors, metabolic disorders, or learning disabilities in children, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. A U.S. EPA draft assessment said safe drinking water should contain no more than one microgram of perchlorate per liter. California authorities allow four micrograms per liter.
Tests done May 30 by DTSC at the Brandeis-Bardin well, a pipe that feeds artesian water into a livestock tank, detected 140 and 150 micrograms of perchlorate per liter. Water samples collected the previous spring did not contain detectable concentrations of perchlorate, DTSC said.
DTSC said it believes perchlorate migrated to the Brandeis-Bardin well from Happy Valley, a site on Boeing property where perchlorate was once stored and has been detected in concentrations of 1,600 micrograms per liter.
In a June 23 letter, state officials ordered Boeing to put together a work plan that identifies all "potential surface water and groundwater pathways ... from the field laboratory."
The plan is due by Aug. 18. DTSC spokesman Baker said a potential cleanup could cost "millions" of dollars.
In an apparently unrelated case, a small study conducted for an environmental group by Texas Tech University and published in April found unhealthy levels of perchlorate in winter lettuces grown elsewhere in Southern California with irrigation water from the Colorado River.
