New concerns raised about toxic chemicals at Santa Susana site

A watchdog group issued a report last month saying that two highly toxic chemicals are not being monitored at the Santa Susana Field lab and potentially can leak into the Los Angeles River. Local water officials, however, say they’ve since responded to the report and are working on addressing the issues raised and that PCBs are not leaking into the river or groundwater.

The report — issued by the Public Employees for the non-profit Environmental Responsibility, or PEER — said California’s public health agencies have failed to monitor the decades-long use and migration of the chemicals at the Santa Susana site that sites atop hills between the Simi and San Fernando valleys.

“We do not know how much PFAS has already run off Santa Susana or penetrated the aquifer used to grow crops in Ventura County,” said Pacific PEER Director Jeff Ruch, adding that PEER has filed a lawsuit over the site’s cleanup. “Santa Susana’s forever chemicals may already be in Southern California’s food chain, and they will not magically disappear.”

Staff with the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board, the state agency that oversees the water pollution discharge from the site, said the agency has been working on addressing the issues mentioned in the PEER report since its release in September.

Experts say the 2,668-acre Santa Susana field is one of the nation’s most polluted areas, sitting at the headwaters of the L.A. River and surrounded by nearly 700,000 residents. Boeing and the federal government own the site.

In its report, PEER alleged the Santa Susana area is probably leaking polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, and per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS. Those pollutants are dubbed “forever chemicals” because they are highly persistent and last thousands of years. PFAS are associated with a wide range of human health risks such as cancer, hormone disruption, liver and kidney damage, developmental and reproductive harm, and immune system toxicity.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency recently said there’s no safe level for the most common form of these chemicals in drinking water.

Residents and activists have been pressuring elected officials and Gov. Gavin Newsom to clean up the site, which was contaminated by a partial nuclear meltdown in 1959 as well as other production involving chemicals.

Despite those calls, a full-blown cleanup has not yet started.

In June, the State Department of Toxic Substances Control, or DTSC, which oversees the cleanup of the Santa Susana area, announced the details of a long-awaited remediation plan that would take about 15 years.

But advocates and residents said the new plan violates 2007 and 2010 agreements between Boeing, NASA, and the Department of Energy and the state that promised to fully clean up the area.

Now, the PEER reports said, California’s public health agencies didn’t just fail to include the chemicals in the future cleanup plan but also missed the opportunity to monitor their migration into groundwater or surface waters. Meanwhile, water board staff said they have always required Boeing to search for PCBs.

According to DTSC, the soil and groundwater at the site are highly contaminated by past industrial activities. When it rains, the stormwater can pick up soil and carry it off-site.

When it comes to monitoring PFAS, the original permit didn’t include the requirement to monitor the highly toxic chemical. However, after the PEER report came out in September, the agency staff decided to add PFAS pollutants to the monitoring process, according to the water board staff.

If the proposed permit that requires monitoring for both chemicals is approved by the water board during its next meeting on Oct. 19, the new rules will go into effect by January 2024, the water board staff said.

A representative with Boeing said in a statement that the airspace giant “has performed extensive analyses and undertaken significant efforts to ensure that stormwater runoff leaving the Santa Susana site complies with our Regional Board permit, resulting in over 99% compliance with the permit’s stringent requirements…. Boeing has not detected PCBs in stormwater at Santa Susana and we are investigating PFAS under the oversight of the DTSC.”

A spokesperson for DTSC wrote in an email that the state agency and the regional water board asked NASA, Boeing, and the U.S. Department of Energy to screen for PFAS in groundwater at SSFL. NASA has now completed the soil and groundwater sampling proposed and is expected to realize a report documenting the findings to DTSC in the coming weeks, according to a DTSC spokesperson.

Still, PEER Director Ruch said that highly toxic pollutants should be closely monitored and removed during future cleanup.

”PFAS and every toxic chemical at Santa Susana should be subject to strict enforceable limits in any water pollution discharge permit and should be completely removed as part of any cleanup,” he said.