No Pollution Peril : Officials Express Relief After Tour of Rocketdyne Site

After weeks of dealing with worried citizens and alarming reports of pollution, many public officials who got a first-hand look at Rockwell International’s Santa Susana Field Laboratory on Monday emerged from the site expressing relief.

“No one has any reason to fear from any problems up there,” said Mel Blevins, watermaster for the Upper Los Angeles River Authority of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. “There’s not any ground water or surface water flowing away from the area that has any pollution in it.”

Radioactive and chemical contamination of a portion of the 2,668-acre complex in Ventura County three miles west of Chatsworth and two miles southeast of Simi Valley was described in a preliminary report released last month by the U.S. Department of Energy, which has contracted with Rockwell’s Rocketdyne division for nuclear work.

More Tests Needed

The DOE report found that while the pollution poses no immediate threat to nearby residents, more environmental tests are necessary to determine the extent of the contamination because of inadequacies in the company’s ground-water monitoring system.

Monday, about 70 elected officials and representatives of local, state and federal regulatory agencies toured the facility in a bus chartered by the company and then met in a conference room to discuss reports of contamination at the lab.

The three-hour meeting, which was closed to the public, was arranged by Rocketdyne officials “to make sure everyone is brought up to the same level of understanding about our activities,” said Steve Lafflam, the laboratory’s environmental manager.

After the meeting, many officials said they believed that reports in the Los Angeles Daily News had exaggerated the problem at the site.

“Panic is not appropriate because there isn’t anything near the level that is dangerous,” said Ventura County Supervisor Madge L. Schaefer. “The Daily News has blown this whole thing out of proportion.”

“I feel confident at this point that there is no cause for concern about safety for people either on or off the site,” said Rep. Elton Gallegly (R-Simi Valley). “It’s my understanding that there are many more DOE sites out there across the country that pose greater cause for concern.”

Monitor Lab

However, Gallegly said his office will “aggressively monitor” the lab to make sure that new monitoring wells are dug and information is provided to the public. This week, Rocketdyne officials will begin meeting with homeowner and environmental groups in Los Angeles and Ventura counties.

Officials from the DOE said the agency is forming a committee to monitor cleanup activities at the lab and to answer questions of public concern. The committee, to be made up of representatives of regulatory agencies, elected officials and residents appointed by elected officials, will meet at least once every two months. The committee’s first meeting has not been scheduled.

Rocketdyne and DOE officials have announced that 18 additional ground-water monitoring wells will be drilled by the end of the year on a portion of the site where nuclear research was conducted for nearly 40 years. The first will be drilled in July, said Rocketdyne spokesman Pat Coulter.

DOE officials estimated in a December report that cleaning up a 290-acre portion of the site where nuclear work occurred will cost about $55 million and take about 20 years. However, a new report estimating the cost and duration of the cleanup will be released in August, said Richard Nolan, a DOE spokesman.

Survey of Sites

Under pressure from Congress, DOE more than three years ago began surveying 35 labs and production sites where weapons or energy development was done for the DOE or its predecessor, the Atomic Energy Commission.

The DOE’s preliminary report released last month says that in one area of the Rocketdyne site, known as the sodium burn pit, soil tests revealed levels of radioactive cesium as high as 700 picocuries per gram of soil--about 10 to 30 times higher than normal background radiation for the area.

The report said that in a sewage leach field where radioactive water was spilled in the 1970s, the highest radiation level found was 4,900 picocuries per gram of soil.

While the group met Monday, about 20 people carrying signs reading “Chernobyl--It Can Happen Here” and “Rocketdyne Confess: How Many Wells Have Been Poisoned?” demonstrated outside the gate on Woolsey Canyon Road.

Public agencies represented at the meeting included the Ventura County Environmental Health Department, the state Water Quality Control Board and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.