SCHOOL PROJECT PROGRESSES; SOIL CONTAMINATION CLEANUP FACES FINE TUNING.

Byline: ByAngela M. Lemire Staff Writer

Stymied by toxic contamination and legal scuffles, planners for the building of a roadway and a high school in Golden Valley might soon clear one hurdle as the state Department of Toxic Substances Control OKs the property for the road construction.

DTSC site manager Nancy Carder said Thursday the agency will certify no further cleanup is needed before beginning construction on the 12-acre Golden Valley Road site, as soon as the landowner, Santa Clarita LLC, agrees to slightly alter its cleanup plan.

Once that certification is complete, construction can begin on Golden Valley Road - which would provide access to a landlocked site where a high school is proposed and link Soledad Canyon Road and Sierra Highway, city officials said.

``The roadway itself is not a problem. We could sign off on that right away,'' Carder said. ``Once (the landowners) redraw some boundaries, the DTSC will issue its `no further action' letter.''

``We don't have any objection to the new boundary whatsoever,'' company Senior Vice President Jerry Swerdlow said. ``All we're waiting for is the processing and that's being reviewed by our consultants.''

At issue is the landowner's phased remediation plan, which divides the 996-acre former Bermite munitions plant property into several sections for the purpose of cleaning leftover manufacturing contaminants from the soil.

In a Sept. 2 letter, the DTSC recommended the landowners revise their cleanup plan, moving a small contaminated piece of land from a phase that cover most of the roadway to a later phase that already will require extensive remediation, Carder said.

The contamination is from chemicals left behind from the former Bermite munitions operation that include perchlorate, a rocket fuel, and volatile organic compounds, including trichloroethylene.

Santa Clarita LLC and its cleanup management group, Remediation Financial Incorporated, are cleaning the Bermite property to prepare it for resale to commercial and residential developers. The landowners have pushed for phased remediation, because the total cleanup is expected to take more than four years.

The city of Santa Clarita, the William S. Hart Union High School District and the Santa Clarita Facilities Foundation are working together to build Golden Valley Road through the property to connect Soledad Canyon Road to Sierra Highway. The road also would provide access to the proposed 135-acre Golden Valley High School, planned just outside the Bermite property. The foundation bought the land to lease to the Hart District.

Beside the DTSC certification, other delays have occurred in the coinciding road and high school construction projects, including ongoing toxicology assessments and legal battles at the school site.

The latest conflict is an eminent domain proceeding that involves 19 acres on abutting National Testing Service property north of the school site, where aerospace testing had been conducted.

School officials want that land graded in a deep slope at the edge of the high school site and to provide a second access from the campus to Via Princessa. But NTS officials have not granted them permission to conduct soil and geological tests on their property. The matter will be heard in court on Oct. 25.

``We want to get on that property to determine what, if any, further mitigations are needed for the school site,'' Lee said Wednesday during a community meeting in Stevenson Ranch on the proposed $52 million Hart bond. ``Right now that property's an unknown. . . There's a point where we'd have to determine if the costs of these mitigations would be prohibitive to this project.''

The Golden Valley High School site itself has been cleared of contaminants, but it continues to be monitored for environmental hazards on neighboring properties, Lee said.

The project will not go forward if results reveal students would be endangered by building a school there, he added.

``This will not be a Belmont II,'' Lee said, responding to a residents' concerns over its proximity to power lines, natural gas pipelines, the San Gabriel Fault and 14 abandoned oil wells located south across the proposed Golden Valley Road route.

Since the Belmont High School project in the Los Angeles Unified School District was halted due to poisonous methane gases from an abandoned oil field, state education officials have toughened restrictions on placing schools near oil wells, Lee said.

``The difference is we know these wells are there and we're not trying to hide it,'' Lee said.

The project site exceeds required setbacks from power lines and is being designed away from the pipeline, while U.S. Geographical Survey officials are conducting further seismic tests to determine if landslide or other soil hazards exist, Lee added.

The contaminants on the Bermite property are not considered a hazard to the proposed high school, said Carder, because the two areas would be separated by a half-mile. The cleanup area would be contained in fencing and prohibit public access, she added.

The compounded delays have made a fall 2001 opening date for the new high school unlikely, school officials said, because the project would require a 16- to 18-month construction schedule and legal proceedings are expected to last several more months.