Judge Throws Out Lawsuit Over Tower : Ojai: Jurist rules that there is no evidence to support residents’ claims of hazards from the weather antenna.

A federal judge Monday threw out a lawsuit by Ojai residents aimed at shutting down a radiation-emitting weather tower until more health studies are completed.

U. S. District Judge Terry J. Hatter Jr. said there is no evidence to support residents’ claims that the government intentionally misled local officials when it described the 98-foot tower as an antenna that would blend in with the scenery.

Hatter, who refused in February to grant an injunction stopping the $2.5-million project, also ruled that the government took reasonable care to ensure that levels of radiation emitted by the tower are safe to nearby homeowners.

A lawyer for a coalition of Ojai area residents, who fear that cancer and other diseases will result from exposure to the radiation, downplayed the ruling and vowed to appeal.

Dale G. Givner, who also lives near the tower, said the judge was not allowed to consider evidence outside the administrative record compiled by the National Weather Service.

“What I wanted to get across was the lack of due process and how the government deceived local officials,” Givner said. He said that would be an important issue for appeal.

“You can’t lie and cheat to get what you want,” Givner said. “Why should the government be able to lie and cheat to get what it wants?”

But Assistant U. S. Atty. Donna Everett, who argued the government’s case Monday, said the weather service did everything required before erecting the tower in the fall.

“The court looked and saw that the agency took a hard look at all the environmental consequences and all of the health risks and found there was nothing harmful about the radar to the environment or the people,” she said.

“I think these people are more concerned with the aesthetics of it rather than the health effects of it,” Everett said of the Ojai residents. “They just don’t want it in their back yard.”

The Sulphur Mountain weather station, operating for nearly a month, is one of 165 Doppler radar systems being built by the government as part of a decade-long renovation of its forecasting arsenal.

Government officials say the Sulphur Mountain station will replace an aging tower atop the federal building in Los Angeles, as well as provide state-of-the-art forecasting data to military, aviation and weather service workers.

“Over the last two storms, it has performed very well,” said Todd Morris, area manager of the weather service office in Oxnard.

“It showed us things we’ve never seen before off the Ventura and Santa Barbara coasts,” Morris said. “This radar is showing us information in great detail, well past Point Conception.”

But critics of the tower complain that studies on the health effects of long-term exposure to the radiation have not proved that the system is safe. They say the tower should be moved to a less populated area.

“There are 750,000 watts of microwave radiation coming out of this thing, and it’s been put in a residential area,” said Dr. Richard Scribner, a researcher at the USC School of Medicine who lives near the tower.

“There’s never been a radar in a civilian population with that much power,” Scribner said. “This is a technology that’s untested as far as the type of exposure these people will be getting.”

Everett, however, said the studies that have been completed have identified no adverse effects from the systems.

“There’s no health hazard here,” she said. “The fact is it’s benefiting many thousands of people. I think their complaints are really unfounded.”

Coalition members, including actor Larry Hagman, do not discount the benefits of the system.

Hagman said he was not surprised with Hatter’s ruling.

“That’s the thing with the government,” he said from his Malibu office. “They keep you in court until they grind you down financially. But we’re rather tenacious up there in Ojai.”

NEXT STEP

Residents opposed to the Ojai radar tower have two months to appeal the judgment against their lawsuit. Fund-raisers are planned in the Ojai Valley to continue the legal battle in the U. S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.