Few Object to Truck Route for Rocket Fuel

A public hearing here Wednesday on a proposed new route for trucks hauling hazardous rocket fuel to Vandenberg Air Force Base drew few protests from residents and public officials who appeared resigned to the new route.

“It’s gone through L.A. for 25 years with no accidents so I guess it’s our turn now,” said Santa Maria Mayor George Hobbs at the second of three hearings conducted by the California Highway Patrol.

This was in sharp contrast to a Tuesday night session in Maricopa, population 1,300, another city on the proposed route, where about 75 people packed the City Council chambers and angrily denounced the proposal.

“Maricopa’s a small town and doesn’t have much political clout, so we’re getting dumped on,” said oil worker Michael Kindred.

The proposed route would include a 70-mile stretch of California 166 from Maricopa, about 120 miles northwest of Los Angeles, to Santa Maria.

The final hearing on the issue is scheduled today in Ventura. Then the CHP will determine whether to recommend that California 166 be approved as a designated route for transporting explosives. State officials will make a decision by the summer, said L. M. Short, a CHP division chief and one of three officers conducting the hearings.

Many Santa Maria residents work at Vandenberg and realize the importance of the base to the local economy, said Santa Barbara County Supervisor DeWayne Holmdahl. As a result, he said, there has been little opposition.

For more than 20 years the nitrogen tetroxide fuel, manufactured in Vicksburg, Miss., had passed through heavily populated areas in the San Gabriel Valley, Los Angeles and Ventura on its way to the big rocket center at Vandenberg Air Force Base near Lompoc. But that route was changed late last year after Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley complained of the danger to the city.

Nitrogen tetroxide is explosive, burns rapidly and gives off a potentially deadly cloud of gas.