Rocketdyne Health Study Threatened

A shift in federal policy could doom plans for a health study of residents near Rocketdyne’s Santa Susana Field Laboratory, members of a citizens advisory panel said.

As a second health study of Rocketdyne workers draws to a close, the panel appointed to oversee the tests contends that funding for a recommended community study is drying up.

Federal Department of Energy funding for the UCLA study of worker chemical exposures--a follow-up to last year’s study of radiation effects--will end Sept. 30, a few weeks after the report is due to be released.

Money to keep the citizens oversight panel afloat will dry up at the same time, Energy Department officials and panelists confirmed Thursday. The group was formed in the early 1990s by state legislators to ensure the independence of the worker health studies.

That could scuttle a long-sought health study of residents who live in the communities surrounding the 2,668-acre Santa Susana Field Laboratory, just northwest of Chatsworth.

Established in 1947, the open-air field lab was the site of decades of nuclear and rocket engine testing. The lab, which is now owned by parent company Boeing, is the site of a multimillion-dollar cleanup. The company’s toxic legacy also has spawned a handful of lawsuits from neighbors charging that their health or properties were damaged by the activities on “The Hill.”

“I’m livid,” said panel member Dr. Caesar Julian, a Simi Valley physician. “I think we haven’t finished the job we set out to do. There has to be follow-up [with residents], and there has to be oversight of that follow-up.”

The $1.5 million for the worker health study--a small chunk of which kept the oversight panel going--will end with the federal fiscal year in September because the final worker health report will be released by that time, said Roger H. Liddle, director of the federal Energy Department’s environmental restoration division in Oakland.

Recent policy changes dictate that the federal Health and Human Services Department will oversee future funding for health studies at Energy Department sites such as the field lab.

“The study purpose was examining the impact of radiation and chemical exposure on workers at the Santa Susana Field Lab--that’s been done,” Liddle said. The federal Centers for Disease Control now has responsibility to decide on further study, he said.

Advisory panel members are petitioning the federal and state governments for funding, and state Sen. Cathie Wright (R-Simi Valley) and Assemblywoman Sheila Kuehl (D-Santa Monica) are pushing for at least $150,000 to continue the work for another year.

“The advisory panel has been told that the [Energy Department] intends to pull the plug on the panel and any future epidemiological work on Sept. 30,” said anti-nuclear activist Daniel Hirsch, the advisory panel’s co-chairman. “That will succeed in shutting down the panel and future studies.”

The latest developments came to light at a meeting of Rocketdyne officials, regulators and residents late Wednesday night.