| Boeing technicians standing over a flocculation tank at the Outfall 018 stormwater treatment system. The engineered treatment system is capable of treating 1,000 gallons of water per minute and uses chemicals and advanced filters to ensure that rainwater leaving the site exceeds standards for drinking water. |
At Santa Susana, a former rocket engine testing facility in southern California, Boeing is using sophisticated engineered stormwater treatment systems to ensure that rainwater leaving the site exceeds standards for drinking water.
A multitude of state-of-the-art stormwater treatment systems have been installed at the former Santa Susana Field Laboratory (SSFL) in the Simi Hills of California. The former rocket and energy test site near Chatsworth, 30 miles from downtown Los Angeles, faces some of the most stringent National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) limits for stormwater runoff in the nation as regulators seek to clean waterways flowing to Mugu Lagoon in Ventura County and the Los Angeles River.
No easy task, the 2,850-acre SSFL site resembles a rumpled blanket of mountainous watersheds, pocked by chemical residue and low-level radioactive contamination from America's leading rocket engine test center. But cleanup is underway to transition the site from a premier Cold-War-era research and testing site to an open-space parkland atop spectacular mountain terrain amidst a megalopolis.
The Boeing Company is making solid progress: The site meets stringent discharge limits established under the Clean Water Act 94 to 100 percent of the time, contingent on storm events.
"The runoff from the SSFL site is, in most cases, better than what you'd find in the city or a residential neighborhood," said Boeing Environmental Operations and Compliance Manager Paul Costa. "We're required to monitor stormwater more often than municipalities or other industries, and when we do, we are required to meet limits that are typically at or below drinking water standards."
Ironically, in most cases, runoff from SSFL gets dirtier once it comingles with urban runoff downstream.
In 2008, to address the challenge of cleaning up runoff from the SSFL site, Boeing hired an independent panel of five internationally recognized surface water experts from UCLA, the University of Alabama, Humboldt State University, and other institutions to study the site, conduct public meetings and identify remedies. Operating with broad autonomy, the panel prescribed a fusion of active treatments, best management practices and passive measures, ranked them by importance, and even helped design them.
Guided by the panel, Boeing implemented more than a dozen specific measures, including new sampling stations, biofiltration units incorporating native plants, pavement removal, erosion controls, culvert modifications, sediment basins, channel modifications, and rock riprap in creeks.
Of the 74,000 cubic yards of contaminated soil recently removed from the site, 20 percent of it was a direct result of recommendations by the panel. The company also built two large surface water treatment plants for $25 million. The largest one can treat 1,000 gallons per minute of runoff -- the equivalent of three swimming pools per hour, an enormous investment for a part-time treatment system engineered to handle brief but intense downpours a few weeks per year.
