SOS to Resume Making Flares, Rehire Workers

Space Ordnance Systems, a Santa Clarita Valley manufacturer of explosives and pyrotechnic devices, has announced that it will resume manufacture of military flares by the end of next week and will rehire 25 of 150 employees it laid off in April.

SOS, a division of Sherman Oaks-based TransTechnology Corp., suspended flare production in April, saying it had not found a safe method to dispose of more than 1,800 drums of explosive waste, largely accumulated from flare production.

The company has since shipped a small amount of the waste to a South Carolina disposal site and has recycled much of the rest, said Burl Alison, vice president of corporation communications for Trans-Technology.

Used as Missile Decoys

The flare devices SOS will resume manufacturing serve as decoys, drawing heat-seeking missiles away from fighter planes. The flares are sold to the U.S. military and foreign governments, Alison said.

The company announced its decision to stop making the flares at an April 17 meeting of the Los Angeles County Regional Planning Commission. The decision to curtail manufacture of the devices was partly because the flares generated wastes that were illegally stored at the firm’s two plants at Mint Canyon near Agua Dulce and Sand Canyon near Canyon Country.

In an agreement reached with the commission on Aug. 15, SOS agreed to post $2.1 million in bond and an $800,000 letter of credit to guarantee a series of cleanup actions, including removal of contaminated soil and filtering of tainted ground water.

SOS will restart the first of three production lines making the flares next week, Alison said. She added that, when the other lines are put back in operation, all laid-off workers will be rehired.

“We hope to get all our laid-off employees back to work by the end of November,” Alison said.

The company and three executives still face 87 misdemeanor charges related to the hazardous wastes.