From the US Department of Energy:
The Department of Energy (DOE) recently received the go-ahead to move forward with a groundwater pilot study.
In July, the California State Water Resources Control Board approved a permit for a pilot study at the Hazardous Materials Storage Area located in Area IV at the 2,850-acre Santa Susana Field Laboratory (SSFL), the former rocket engine testing and nuclear research facility where DOE operated the Energy Technology Engineering Center (ETEC).
The in-situ, or in-place, study is an innovative remediation approach that uses biological and chemical reduction to treat contaminated groundwater, said Dr. Josh Mengers, DOE’s federal project director for ETEC.
During a site tour at SSFL in April 2024 for the Groundwater University series, Mengers demonstrated how the pilot study would work.
Groundwater University was an education workshop hosted by the California Department of Toxic Substances Control in cooperation with DOE, Boeing and NASA to inform the public about groundwater at SSFL and prepare them to review and comment on future decisions documents for the site.
The pilot is a small-scale study that involves injecting biological and chemical amendments into separate wells to create a reductive environment and stimulate natural degradation of the contaminants present. DOE will monitor the progress over time.
“We’re conducting this pilot on a small scale because we want to understand the sphere of influence these amendments will have on the contaminants,” Mengers said, adding that using two types of amendments will hopefully create a more robust treatment with two degradation mechanisms happening.
“We’re not proposing that this is going to be the solution, but we’re testing it out to see how well it works.”
The pilot study is just one interim measure DOE has taken to remediate groundwater while working toward a final cleanup plan for Area IV.
In November 2020, DOE published a record of decision for groundwater cleanup that describes monitoring and treatment approaches to addressing contaminants and potential areas affected at ETEC, as well as interim actions.
The installation of a solar-powered, automated pump system at the Former Sodium Disposal Facility (FSDF) in May 2024 is another interim action DOE has done.
Pumping water manually has taken place at the FSDF since 2017 as part of interim cleanup measures. Between the manual and automated pumping, more than 67,000 gallons of contaminated groundwater have been removed.
These actions are only part of the groundwater measures DOE has taken since the late 1980s when the department installed the first monitoring well to identify the types of contaminants present.
Today, DOE has around 100 wells in Area IV, many of which are sampled quarterly.
Read about ongoing groundwater activities.
