We have until 5:00pm (PST) TODAY to tell the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board that Boeing's pollution permit (NPDES) would allow dangerous contamination into the Los Angeles River and the Calleguas Creek Watershed.
You can use our pre-fab letter to stop Boeing's dangerous NPDES by 5:00pm (PST) TODAY, January 18th.
For decades, radioactive and toxic chemical contamination from the Santa Susana Field Lab (SSFL), a former nuclear reactor and rocket testing facility, has migrated offsite in surface water, posing a risk to neighboring communities, wildlife and the environment. Despite legally binding agreements mandating that the polluted SSFL be cleaned up by 2017, the required soil cleanup has not even started.
Rather than taking action to assure that the source of the contamination is cleaned up, Boeing and the Regional Water Quality Control Board are proposing to dramatically weaken Boeing’s already inadequate pollution discharge permit. The proposal would allow significantly higher concentrations of certain pollutants, and unlimited amounts of other contaminants, to be released.
Approving even higher levels of contamination in surface runoff than what the current permit allows is inappropriate. The protections should be significantly tightened, not weakened.
Under the 2022 proposed permit:
* 95% of the limits being changed are being weakened or eliminated entirely, not strengthened.
* Approximately 90% of the toxic chemicals Boeing has identified as contaminating the SSFL would have no limits whatsoever under the proposed permit.
* Limits would be reduced or completely omitted for 25% of the contaminants currently subject to limits.
Outfalls 001 and 002, which receive 60% of the SSFL’s total surface water, have been exempted from enforceable limits so that Boeing can exceed health and safety goals without incurring fines. There is no justification to allow these two important outfalls to remain as non-enforceable “benchmarks,” except to profit Boeing at the expense of the public, wildlife and environment.
Boeing is also being allowed to send contaminated water to unlined ponds on the site’s property, where it infiltrates into and further contaminates the SSFL’s already terribly polluted groundwater.
The headwaters of the Los Angeles River originate at the Santa Susana Field Lab. Surface water discharged from the SSFL can contaminate the Arroyo Simi, a tributary located in the Calleguas Creek Watershed in Ventura County, where supplies of groundwater are critical to agricultural operations in this area. Moreover, much of the population in the Calleguas Creek Watershed area relies upon groundwater for drinking. The Water Board should be limiting the pollutants in SSFL discharges, so that the amount of pollutants entering the surface waters and groundwater basins are correspondingly reduced.
The Water Quality Control Board should be protecting the public, wildlife and the environment from Boeing’s contamination, not helping Boeing evade fines for discharging dangerous pollutants.
Join us to urge the Board to reverse course: reject Boeing’s proposed NPDES permit, insist on the full cleanup of the Santa Susana Field Lab, and act aggressively to bring Boeing into compliance under protective contamination limits.
You can use our pre-fab letter to stop Boeing's dangerous NPDES by 5:00pm (PST) TODAY, January 18th.
PLEASE FORWARD THIS TO OTHERS WHO CARE ABOUT PROTECTING WATER, WILDLIFE AND THE PUBLIC!
You can also watch an in-depth video tutorial that goes through all of the documents, showing how we came to our conclusions.