The Environmental Protection Agency has decided there's no need to rid drinking water of a toxic rocket fuel ingredient that has fouled water around the country, including at a former rocket testing and nuclear reactor site in Simi Valley.
The ingredient, perchlorate, has been found on at least 395 sites in 35 states at high levels that some scientists say could interfere with thyroid function and pose developmental health risks, particularly for babies and fetuses.
A 2006 state-funded study found perchlorate had been migrating off the Santa Susana Field Laboratory site in Simi Valley for years, contaminating ground water and causing at least 260 cancers.
Boeing, which now owns the former Rocketdyne site in the hills above Simi Valley, later said the study was completely wrong.
An EPA draft regulatory document, which the Associated Press obtained Monday, says mandating a cleanup level for perchlorate would not result in a "meaningful opportunity for health-risk reduction for persons served by public water systems."
The conclusion, which comes after years of dispute over the issue, was denounced by a Democratic senator and an environmentalist, who accused the EPA of caving to pressure from the Pentagon.
"It is absolutely outrageous that an environmental protection agency would decide the public should be poisoned by a highly dangerous contaminant," said Dan Hirsch, co-chairman of the Santa Susana Field Laboratory Advisory Panel. "The Defense Department has pressured the EPA not to regulate it, because it would cost the military a lot of money to clean up the mess it's made."
Liability an issue
The Defense Department used perchlorate for decades in testing missiles and rockets, and most perchlorate contamination is the result of defense and aerospace activities, congressional investigators said last year.
The Pentagon could face liability if the EPA set a national drinking water standard that forced water agencies around the country to undertake costly cleanup efforts. Defense officials have spent years questioning the EPA's conclusions about the risks posed by perchlorate.
Hirsch said that while the EPA's findings are unfortunate, he doesn't think they will have much bearing on what happens at the Santa Susana site, which had a nuclear reactor meltdown in 1959. Monitoring and cleanup of the site falls under state laws, which are more stringent, he said. In 2007, California adopted a drinking water standard of 6 parts of perchlorate per billion, an amount that is considered to have no ill effects on consumers.
"The federal action is unlikely to get people out of having to comply with our state law," he said.
Blythe Jameson, a spokeswoman for Boeing, said it's too soon to say how new federal guidelines would affect the site, but the company will continue to test and treat the one contaminated well at the Simi site.
Some said the EPA's decision was purely political.
"This is a widespread contamination problem, and to see the Bush EPA just walk away is shocking," said Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., who chairs the Senate's environment committee.
'Some degree of risk'
The Pentagon objected strongly Monday to the suggestion that it sought to influence the EPA's decision.
"We have not intervened in any way in the EPA's determination not to regulate perchlorate. If you read their determination, that's based on criteria in the Safe Drinking Water Act," Paul Yaroschak, Pentagon deputy director for emerging contaminants, said in an interview.
Yaroschak said the Pentagon has been working for years to clean up perchlorate at its facilities. He also contended the Pentagon wasn't the source of as much perchlorate contamination as once believed, noting it also comes from fireworks, road flares and fertilizer.
Benjamin Grumbles, the EPA's assistant administrator for water, said in a statement that "science, not the politics of fear in an election year, will drive our final decision."
"We know perchlorate in drinking water presents some degree of risk, and we're committed to working with states and scientists to ensure public health is protected and meaningful opportunities for reducing risk are fully considered," Grumbles said.
Grumbles said the EPA expected to seek comment and take final action before the end of the year.
Perchlorate is particularly widespread in California and the Southwest, where it has been found in groundwater and the Colorado River, a drinking-water source for 20 million people. It's also been found in lettuce and other foods.
