4 Rockwell Critics to Advise Firm : Environment: The group will monitor the cleanup of the company’s Santa Susana Field Lab.

Four citizen activists and critics of Rockwell International became semiofficial advisers to the firm Monday when they were installed as members of a government task force monitoring cleanup of the company’s Santa Susana Field Laboratory west of Chatsworth.

Jerome Raskin, Dan Hirsch and Barbara Johnson--all active in the successful fight to stop nuclear work at the site in the Simi Hills--attended their first meeting as members of the Santa Susana Field Laboratory Work Group, which is chaired by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Sheldon Plotkin, another anti-nuclear activist named to the panel, did not attend Monday’s meeting at Simi Valley City Hall.

The work group, which includes representatives of several health and environmental agencies, meets quarterly for updates on environmental testing and cleanup at Santa Susana, where Rockwell formerly did nuclear research for the U.S. Department of Energy.

Appointment of the four activists and of a fifth community member--Simi Valley City Council member Ann Rock--followed pleas by anti-nuclear activists for inclusion of citizen members.

Rockwell and Department of Energy officials were displeased with the EPA’s choice of the four activists.

All are members of the Rocketdyne Cleanup Coalition, an alliance of anti-nuclear and neighborhood activists that officials believe has exaggerated pollution problems at Santa Susana.

The cleanup coalition was named for Rockwell’s Rocketdyne division, which runs the lab in the Simi Hills.

Facing pressure from the cleanup coalition and declining nuclear business, Rockwell announced earlier this year that it would cease nuclear research at Santa Susana.

Two of the new task force members--Plotkin and Hirsch--are active in groups that recently sued the DOE in federal court in San Francisco in an effort to stop a government nuclear research project being carried out by Rockwell at the University of Missouri. The project, known as TRUMP-S, was transferred to Missouri from Santa Susana because of the opposition here.

“DOE was initially quite concerned about some of the individuals” selected for the work group, DOE official Roger Liddle conceded during the lunch break Monday.

But Liddle said he thought their “integrity will override any personal prejudices they may have.”

“We would not have recommended these people” but “we’re willing to work with them,” Rocketdyne spokesman Paul Sewell said.

Rockwell is involved in a $37.3-million, DOE-funded cleanup of radioactive and chemical pollution at Santa Susana.

The six-year cleanup plan includes removal of mostly low-level contamination from soil and buildings and upgrading of pollution controls on non-nuclear energy research projects still in operation.

During Monday’s meeting, Hirsch criticized efforts by state health officials to obtain DOE funds for a health study of nearby residents, saying it would be more beneficial to first study the health of Santa Susana workers instead.

Hirsch said the workers would have received higher radioactive and toxic exposures than the public. If workers showed no unusual patterns of disease, there would probably be no need to study the surrounding community, Hirsch said.

But Dr. Robert Holtzer, a public health medical officer with the state Department of Health Services, said the DOE is unlikely to fund an occupational study.

That is because the DOE already is arranging for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to do occupational health studies at its research and weapons sites.

Liddle of the DOE said he would inquire about whether Santa Susana could be included in those studies.