SCARE TACTICS

The “golden age” of the California Department of Toxic Substances (DTSC), when they worked to protect the community from polluters, has passed. In their most current Draft Environmental Impact Report (DEIR) the DTSC has proposed using significantly weaker cleanup standards, the most outdated and dangerous cleanup methods, and even allowed Boeing to help write their documents.

It’s not surprising that the DTSC’s Draft Environmental Impact Report (DEIR) has inflated the amount of clean soil that has to be remediated. They’ve cut out mention of on-site remediation and bioremediation. They’ve based their inflated amount of trucks needed, and years required, on their inflated amount of soil to be removed and remediated.

It’s been NASA, DOE and Boeing’s plan all along to make their supplemental environmental impact statements seem more “reasonable,” compared to the DTSC’s current remediation plans. Even though NASA, DOE and Boeing plan to leave up to 98% of the contamination on site, there are some in the community who still believe the lies that leaving the contamination would be safer.

What our community needs and our children deserve is for the DTSC to write a DEIR that uses the most health-protective cleanup standards, the smartest technology, the safest methods and the least amount of disruption to the environment while adhering to the AOC cleanup agreements.

scare tactic: Destroying the environment

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an allegory: black mustard

The responsible parties have said that the 2010/AOC cleanup agreements would scrape the soil to bedrock, tear down mountains, drain the ponds and kill the wildlife.

Though remediation will have some short-term impacts on the wildlife, it will heal the environment in the long-term.

Bioaccumulative chemicals, such as mercury and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), currently present onsite could result in species mortality, reproductive impairment, and developmental effects… Wildlife species might acquire toxic substances from the environment, along with nutrients and water. Some contaminants are metabolized or excreted, but others accumulate in specific tissues. Bioaccumulated toxins become more concentrated in successive levels in the food web… Thus, top-level carnivores, such as snakes or coyotes, are most severely affected by contaminants. The removal of non-treatable soils would have a moderate, beneficial, regional, and long-term effect on wildlife species by reducing the potential for contaminant exposure or bioaccumulation…” ~ https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/files/Draft_EIS.pdf (page 204)


Remediation to bedrock or “moonscape”

Boeing, NASA and the Department of Energy (DOE) are claiming that the cleanup would reach bedrock in order to follow the 2010-AOC cleanup agreements. They’ve nicknamed it “moonscaping.”

“…DTSC disagrees with the assumption that to accomplish a cleanup of the [SSFL] and the process of correcting the environmental contamination will result in a moonscape… Cleaning up the site will result in ancillary environmental impacts that DOE and NASA will need to mitigate, including plans to restore and rehabilitate the ecosystems. DTSC will consult and communicate with habitat and ecosystem experts to ensure that DOE and NASA’s restoration efforts are successful.” ~ DTSC 2010, Responses to Comments

Image by William Preston Bowling

Image by William Preston Bowling

Old-growth oak trees

The responsible parties have claimed that the AOC cleanup would kill the old-growth oak trees at the Santa Susana Field Lab… they never mention the fact that the trees are protected by a clause in the AOC.

From ACME LA website: NASA was able to protect old-growth oak trees when they were ordered to cleanup a small part of the Santa Susana Field Lab. Soil removal in 2010, which targeted dioxin, was conducted in areas containing some oak trees. “We got at the soil we needed to with very minimal disturbance to the surrounding environment. That was our goal,” said Randy Dean. “In this manner, no oak tree roots were exposed or damaged during the soil removal.”

Tearing down mountains

scare tactic: toxic trucks

The statement of the So. Cal Federation of Scientists at DOE Scoping Hearing for the Draft Environmental Impact Statement challenges the DOE’s amount of soil to be removed. It seems those numbers were an inside job meant to frighten residents.

No in-situ or BIOREMEDIATION

  1. NASA said in its 2013 Draft Environmental Impact Statement that “in-situ” soil remediation (cleaning the soil onsite, rather than taking it away to dispose of it) might be considered for treating up to 180,000 cubic yards of soil, out of the estimated total of 500,000 cubic yards of soil NASA estimated needed to be cleaned. That would require only 320,000 cubic yards to be disposed of offsite, dramatically reducing the trucks needed for the cleanup.

    However, in NASA’s 2019 Draft Environmental Impact Statement NASA now claims that there is significant “new information” that supposedly shows in-situ and bioremediation technologies won’t work. (See the NRDC and CBG letter to learn more, page 20)