Naval Battle

The U.S. Navy looms figuratively and literally over the oceanfront communities of Silver Strand, Hollywood Beach and Hollywood-by-the-Sea.

Literally, because a 107-foot building bristling with radar antennas that stands at the Port of Hueneme entrance can be seen from the kitchen windows of many of the 10,000 nearby residents.

And figuratively, because some see the building as a symbol of the federal government’s unresponsiveness to questions about whether electromagnetic radiation emanating from the sophisticated devices poses a health threat to residents and beach-goers.

Criticism about the situation began with a handful of residents who eventually gained support from the nonprofit Environmental Defense Center and the Surfrider Foundation.

On Tuesday, the California Coastal Commission will take up the issue at a meeting in Monterey, the most thorough review since it surfaced about two years ago. However, the commission is not scheduled to take any action. And what practical power the commission has to regulate a $100-million defense installation built more than a decade ago is unclear.

The options are limited: working with the Navy, turning to mediation or going to court.

“Part of the problem is, why did it take us 10 years to figure out it was there and that we had this problem?” said Mark Delaplaine, a commission staff member who specializes in ensuring that federal agencies comply with laws designed to protect the coast. “You can’t argue the Navy was trying to slip this through when no one was looking. . . . It’s hard to get the courts to tear down a single-family home, much less a large naval facility.”

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Navy officials say they have repeatedly conducted tests and assured the community no health hazard exists.

Residents and state officials want to examine the raw data that led the military to that conclusion. But that information is classified, said Cmdr. Paul Benfield of the Surface Warfare Engineering Facility, which sits on the grounds of Port Hueneme’s huge Seabee base.

“We try to be as open and forthcoming as we can,” he said. “I can understand what their frustration is, and I wish they could understand my frustration. We’re being asked to prove a negative.”

The inability of residents to get straight answers to what they consider basic questions has led to an atmosphere of mistrust.

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“There’s a lot of skepticism in the community,” said Vickie Finan, president of the Channel Islands Beach Community Services District. “Everybody wants to know if there’s some reason to be concerned. . . . We’re not wackos. We are reasonable people who would like answers to our questions.”

The five-member district panel voted unanimously in December to back the Coastal Commission in its efforts to extract more information from the Navy, said Finan. She also is a member of the Beacon, an environmental group that spearheads neighborhood opposition to a jet proposal put forward by the Navy.

That debate began several years ago when local residents learned the Navy was seeking a special airspace permit that would allow jets to fly at speeds up to 375 mph and as low as 100 feet above the ocean toward the center of the facility to test its sensing equipment.

While fighting the proposal, residents realized they knew little about the 50,000-square-foot radar testing facility that sits several hundred yards away from beachfront homes.

Pentagon budget cuts--rather than neighborhood opposition--eventually forced the Navy to drop plans in 1996 to fly jets straight at Silver Strand beach.

Still, some locals were left wondering whether the engineering facility itself constituted a health hazard, given the well-publicized questions about electromagnetic radiation from power-pole transformers, video-display tubes and cellular telephones.

Suspicions were further aroused when it emerged that no proof could be found that the Navy had jumped through regulatory hoops set up by the state for construction along the coastline.

“We’ve been trying to find the documentation,” the Navy’s Benfield said. “Obviously, it must be there or it would not have been built.”

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In a May 1997 letter to the Coastal Commission, Navy officials conceded that they do not know if environmental documentation was ever completed, asking that “the record on the facility, as it currently exists and operates, be closed.”

Delaplaine said he finds it odd that the paperwork is missing, in violation of state and federal law. But he understands.

“It could be in a box somewhere,” he said. “People are trying to argue the Navy is trying to hide something. Being a member of a regulatory agency, I know it is possible to lose old files.”

The commission asked the Navy to belatedly do what it should have done in the first place--submit a detailed environmental analysis of the project. Instead, the Navy submitted a document that is more descriptive in nature, cataloging the kinds of electronic equipment on the site.

“It’s not flat-out stonewalling,” Delaplaine said. “They have been responsive--just not 100%.”

Indeed, despite repeated inquiries by the commission and the Beacon, those without the required security clearance are not much closer to confirming the accuracy of Navy assurances about the installation’s safety.

“It’s all about accountability,” said Lee Quaintance, a Beacon member. “Why haven’t they come forward, stood up to the plate and done their duty under the law? . . . We wouldn’t accept that from the developer of a housing tract.”

Benfield insists the installation is safe, saying any radiation used at the facility is directed out to sea rather than at inhabited areas and is more akin to that from a light bulb than to nuclear radiation.

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“The exposure to the community is very negligible, very infrequently done,” he said. “We’ve got people working in those buildings, we’ve got people working in that community . . . so we’re not going to do something that’s going to harm ourselves or others.”

Still, the Navy itself has acknowledged potential hazards have existed.

Some were outlined in 1978 in what Benfield describes as an “informal study” of what was originally proposed to be a much larger Surface Warfare Engineering Facility. The project eventually built was smaller and modified so it no longer created a hazard.

Potential hazards also existed for Navy employees in the building at one time, but those have been corrected, military officials told commission staff.

The only current theoretical hazard that could be posed to non-Navy personnel would be to someone on a ship--or a surfer on a very large wave--70 feet above the water, although the exposure level would have to continue for such a long period that a threat is unlikely to occur, commission staff said the Navy has told them. Delaplaine is seeking details of this worst-case scenario.

Tuesday’s hearing was prompted by repeated public requests, Delaplaine said, adding that it is unusual for such an extensive review of an issue to be scheduled without any anticipated action.

Whatever happens, those who have long lobbied for such scrutiny are glad their day has come.

“This will be a rather dramatic meeting,” the Beacon’s Quaintance predicted. “This has festered for a very long time. It’s not an issue that will just float by.”