Democrats Seek Ban on Rockwell Nuclear Work

The Los Angeles County Democratic Party leadership has passed a resolution sponsored by a Northridge resident calling for a moratorium on nuclear work at Rockwell International’s Santa Susana Field Laboratory and a public hearing on contamination at the site.

Rockwell’s Rocketdyne division, which operates the Ventura County lab west of Chatsworth and southeast of Simi Valley, has said no nuclear work is being done there now.

Retired education professor Estelle Lit introduced the resolution at the monthly meeting of the county Democratic Central Committee. She said she based her motion on news reports about chemical and radioactive pollution at the lab.

It was one of about five resolutions the party adopted Tuesday at its meeting in Los Angeles.

Copies of the resolution will be mailed next week to about 39 state and federal Democratic legislators, said Jim Clarke, chairman of the county Democratic Central Committee.

Rockwell officials declined comment.

A U.S. Department of Energy report released last month identified several contaminated areas at the lab and called for more environmental tests to determine the extent of the pollution. The report said the contamination poses no immediate risk to the public.

Lit’s resolution calls for the company to halt any nuclear work until unspecified “state and federal authorities” hold a public hearing at which residents can air concerns about the possibility of pollution from the lab threatening their neighborhoods.

Although the company says no nuclear work is being done there now, over the years, Rockwell has operated 16 nuclear reactors for DOE at the lab. Most of the work was done in the 1960s, with the last reactor shut down in the early 1980s. The firm has also conducted nuclear fuel recycling operations that involved the handling of plutonium, but that work ceased in 1986.

However, Rockwell hopes to gain future contracts with DOE to resume the work.

Lit, elected in June to serve on the party’s 200-member county central committee, said Rockwell should not accept nuclear work because the population of the Simi and San Fernando valleys has grown enormously since Rockwell first began doing nuclear research in the 1940s.

Rockwell spokesmen say none of the contaminants have seeped into surrounding soil or ground water, an assertion supported so far by Ventura County tests of private wells and a spring about two miles downhill from the lab.

But Lit, who has been active in organizing homeowners concerned about the pollution, said she is not satisfied with assurances from the company or from regulatory agencies.