SITE WORK NEARING START DATE.

Byline: Heather MacDonald Staff Writer

SANTA CLARITA - Plans to begin remove unexploded ordnance and to map the path of the groundwater pollution underneath the former Bermite munitions factory are slowly moving forward, officials said.

With $7 million obtained by U.S. Rep. Howard P. ``Buck'' McKeon, all that is left before starting work on the 996 acre site is to hammer out cost sharing agreements between the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the property owner, Remediation Financial Inc.

``We have been progressing well,'' said Gary Brown, Phoenix-based RFI's director of development. ``It's taken longer than I would have thought, but that's true of everything about this project.''

RFI is also working with the Castaic Lake Water Agency to ink a deal to share the estimated $28 million cost of ridding the area's groundwater of perchlorate, a rocket fuel propellant used at the munitions factory.

``We're dealing with the federal bureaucracy here,'' said CLWA spokeswoman Mary Lou Cotton. ``I'm sure we won't start work tomorrow, but we have been making progress.''

CLWA and RFI have both proposed using credit for work already performed on the site to pay for their share of the cost, said Sara Amir, the chief of the Department of Toxic Substances Control's Southern California Cleanup Operations.

CLWA officials and RFI representatives have been able to put aside concerns about a lawsuit the water agency filed against the company in November of 2000, Brown said.

``That was the most positive step,'' Brown said. ``There is some level of trust between us now.''

The suit seeks to force RFI to clean up the water pollution immediately. It is still pending.

State officials, along with CLWA and RFI, have been studying the size and scope of the pollution in the Saugus aquifer for months.

Unexploded ordnance waste, much of it buried in two landfills, and more than 275 chemicals have made 996 acres at the center of the city unusable.

Congress has approved plans to spend a total of $17 million on the cleanup, but has yet to cut a check for the remaining $10 million, said Scott Wilk, a spokesman for McKeon, R-Santa Clarita.

``This property is in the heart of Santa Clarita,'' Wilk said. ``It is imperative that it is cleaned up, and the congressman believes the federal government should bear some of that burden.''

For nearly 50 years, the 996 acres off Soledad Canyon Road were used by defense contractors to build and test dynamite, Sidewinder missiles and small rockets used in World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War and the Cold War.

About 3,000 homes, several needed roads and a park are planned for the former industrial property after it is cleaned and certified by the DTSC. But that is still a long way off, all sides agree, especially because of RFI's legal and financial woes.

The state attorney general is considering taking action against RFI for not making sufficient progress and failing to pay its bills, after DTSC found that RFI violated its agreement with the agency, Amir said.

Earlier this month, the DTSC rejected RFI's claim that since progress was being made in the cleanup using the money obtained by McKeon, the company had not violated the agreement.

``We'll make that argument to the Attorney General's Office,'' Brown said. ``We think it is persuasive.''