State considering not seeking Superfund status for old Rocketdyne site near Simi Valley
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on January 16, 2008 at 8:42 pmFrom the LA Daily News:
Vowing to conduct a strict cleanup of the long-troubled Santa Susana Field Laboratory, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Tuesday said the state wants to maintain authority over the site and won’t seek federal Superfund status for the area. State officials said they do not believe Superfund status is needed because they are already negotiating with property owner Boeing Co. to clean up the site to the highest standards.
The decision came as the governor also backed off an earlier plan to weaken the standards under which the contaminated rocket lab site near Chatsworth will be cleaned. “Recent state actions, we think, create an unprecedented opportunity to achieve an expedited cleanup of this site with full liability and costs to be assumed by the Boeing Company,” said Linda Adams, secretary of the California Environmental Protection Agency.
The state actions were widely cheered Tuesday by neighbors and environmentalists, who said they believe the site is now finally headed for decontamination under the highest possible standards. “There was joy today in the long-suffering community surrounding this very contaminated site,” said Dan Hirsch of the activist group Committee to Bridge the Gap.
But why not the Superfund designation? From the Los Angeles Times:
Linda S. Adams, secretary of the California Environmental Protection Agency, said the state might be better positioned to make Boeing more quickly remove the rocket fuel and nuclear test contamination that was left at the site near Simi Valley. “We want a little more time to determine if [a Superfund] listing will be advantageous or not,” Adams said during a conference call that included leaders from the Sierra Club and the Natural Resources Defense Council. “We think it’s very important to partner with federal EPA but . . . we are concerned that [a Superfund] listing at this time might actually slow down the process.”
Cleanup efforts at several Superfund sites across the nation have been plagued by years of delay.
To read the full text of the Daily News article, click here. To read the full text of the article from the Los Angeles Times, click here.
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