Rocketdyne Health Study Imperiled

A shift in federal policy could doom plans for a health study of residents near Rocketdyne’s Santa Susana Field Laboratory, members of a citizen’s 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 citizen’s 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, near the border of Los Angeles and Ventura counties.

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 property 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.

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.

Also at that meeting, Rocketdyne disclosed that it has tested soil for contamination in the Bell Canyon area. This marks the aerospace giant’s first sizable foray into off-site testing, long a concern among neighbors who fault Rocketdyne for occurrences of cancer and other ailments.

Rocketdyne’s only other substantial off-site testing has been in remote areas, including Sage Ranch and the Brandeis-Bardin Institute, a center for Jewish studies. Over the years, some individual homes have been checked at the owners’ request, a Rocketdyne official said.