No Threat to Water Seen on Lab Grounds

After weeks of dealing with worried residents and alarming reports of contamination, many of the public officials who got a firsthand look at the Rockwell International Santa Susana Field Laboratory on Monday emerged from the scene expressing relief.

“No one has any reason to fear from any problems up there,” said Mel Blevins, water master for the Upper Los Angeles River Authority of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power and one of 70 officials who toured the site. “There’s not any ground water or surface water flowing away from the area that has any pollution in it.”

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

The 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.