Government Work on Radar Tower Halted : Courts: Ruling prevents Weather Service from gaining access to Ojai Valley hilltop where system was being installed.

A Ventura County Superior Court judge on Thursday granted a restraining order that prohibits the federal government from gaining access to the Ojai Valley hilltop where it is installing a $2-million radar system.

Judge John J. Hunter approved the temporary order for landowner Agnes Baron, who complained in a lawsuit that her neighbors, William and Ernestine Kee, violated an agreement to use her road when they leased land to the government to house the system.

The ruling means the National Weather Service must halt final work on its 98-foot Doppler radar tower just off Sulphur Mountain Road, or risk violating the court order.

Hunter scheduled a Jan. 6 hearing to hear arguments and review the complaint in detail.

But the case is expected to be decided in federal court, where opponents of the radar tower said they would file a complaint next week to force the government to do a full environmental review of the system before it becomes operational.

“We are euphoric over the judge’s ruling,” said David Hedman, an Ojai Valley resident who has organized a coalition of property owners to get the radar station relocated.

“It’s a travesty that the federal government should be breaking the law so notoriously and get away with it,” Hedman said.

Baron is an 86-year-old widow who owns 170 acres along Sulphur Mountain Road in the Ojai Valley. She said she “never heard a word from friend or foe” about the government’s plan to build the radar station next door until it was erected.

Attorneys representing Baron in court on Thursday successfully argued that their client never gave the Kees permission to allow government workers and heavy equipment to cross her property to build and operate the radar tower.

“I think they wanted to erect the tower before people got a chance to complain,” said attorney Richard C. Loy, who represents Baron. “They gave the bare-minimum legal requirement of notice.”

But attorney William B. Parker told Hunter that the Kees could not prevent the Weather Service from using Baron’s access road.

“How can my clients prohibit the federal government from crossing the easement?” Parker asked. “The lease was entered into months and months ago.”

The judge said that was not his concern.

“I can’t restrict the U.S. government, but I can restrict the defendant from overburdening the easement,” Hunter said.

At one point during Thursday’s hearing, Assistant U.S. Atty. Suzette Clover told Hunter he had no authority to render a decision on the radar station because it was a federal public works project.

But Clover sat down when Hunter asked if she was making an official court appearance. She said she was not authorized to get involved.

Neither Clover nor Parker would comment after Thursday’s ruling. The Kees also left the courthouse without talking to reporters.

Officials at the National Weather Service, however, said they had no plans to relocate the radar system despite the temporary restraining order and local concern over low-level radiation emissions.

“We spent a lot of money to get that site,” said James Campbell, deputy western regional director of the National Weather Service. “The equipment’s already been placed there and the radar is expected for delivery very soon.”

Campbell said U.S. Commerce Department attorneys would take over the legal fight in federal court after Christmas.

“We’re certainly going to try and keep the radar there,” he said.

Since the black steel scaffold was erected earlier this month, Ojai Valley residents fearful of the low-level radiation waves have mobilized to stop the radar system from going on-line next month.

More than 100 people packed Summit Elementary School last week at an informational meeting called by Rep. Elton Gallegly (R-Simi Valley) to have Weather Service officials attempt to alleviate any health concerns. But many remain unconvinced that the radiation is not harmful.

“All these risk assessments that have been done on microwave radiation are inadequate,” said Richard Scribner, an epidemiologist at the USC School of Medicine who studies low-level radiation and its effects.

According to Scribner, research conducted just this year has connected low-frequency radiation similar to the emissions of the Doppler radar to leukemia and brain tumors.

“I don’t think anyone can say one way or the other whether it’s safe or not,” said Scribner, who also lives near the Sulphur Mountain radar station.

The Sulphur Mountain station would replace an aging weather tower atop the federal building in West Los Angeles. It is one of 115 such systems being installed under a $4.5-billion Weather Service renovation.

Residents in Buffalo, N.Y., recently won the relocation of a nearly identical Doppler radar tower in their neighborhood, deputy regional director Campbell said.

“But across the United States, there has not been a lot of resistance,” the Weather Service official said.