News Coverage
EPA to take 240 years to clean Superfund site
Published July 30, 2001
It will take 240 years to restore groundwater contaminated with rocket fuel from Rancho Cordova's Aerojet property, despite a $111 million cleanup program, the federal Environmental Protection Agency said Monday.
The next-best proposal would have taken 348 years to restore the groundwater, the agency said.
Nine wells near the 8,500-acre Aerojet Superfund site are undrinkable, and the EPA estimated 13 more could be lost during the next 25 years unless the chemical is contained.
Along with other chemicals, the groundwater has high levels of perchlorate, a chemical that affects the thyroid. The EPA's goal is to reduce the concentration from its current 8,000 parts per billion to four parts per billion, the lowest measurable level.
The Environmental Working Group, a public-interest research organization with offices in Washington, D.C., and Oakland, recently called for a national cleanup standard of 4.3 parts per billion in drinking water.
"This plan sets the most protective cleanup standard ever for perchlorate," said John Kemmerer, branch chief of the EPA's Superfund program in San Francisco.
The plan includes pumping out the contaminated groundwater, treating it, then using it or releasing it into the American River or its tributaries.
"Two-hundred and forty years (to clean up the site) is just sort of preposterously long," said Richard Wiles, the group's senior vice president.
However, "there are millions of people that drink water every day that is contaminated with more than 4 parts per billion of perchlorate. It'll be a sad day when the groundwater from a Superfund site is cleaner than their drinking water."
The environmental group estimated recently that the drinking water of at least 7 million Californians is contaminated with perchlorate, as are residents in at least 17 other states.
The chemical has been measured in the Colorado River and Lake Mead; in Phoenix, Tucson and other areas in Arizona; as well as cities in Indiana, Iowa and Kansas.
Aerojet and its subsidiaries have manufactured rocket engines since 1953, releasing what the EPA said are unknown amounts of hazardous chemicals into the ground.
The area was declared a Superfund site in 1983 after perchlorate and other chemicals were discovered in private wells and the American River.
Too much perchlorate can damage the thyroid gland, which controls growth, development and metabolism. Newborns and young children could suffer retardation, hearing or speech loss and motor skill problems. The chemical also can cause cancer at high levels.