Legislative Committee to Investigate Rocketdyne

A state legislative committee will investigate whether the state Department of Health Services worked with Boeing Co.’s Rocketdyne Division to suppress a cancer survey of the community surrounding the company’s Santa Susana Field Laboratory, officials said.

Assemblyman Scott Wildman (D-Los Angeles), who chairs the Joint Legislative Audit Committee, said the investigation will center on whether health officials conspired with Rocketdyne to bury the 1997 cancer study that showed a higher-than-normal incidence of lung cancer in the area.

The report was made public two weeks ago by another legislator who received a copy from activists, who in turn obtained a copy through a public records search.

The investigation by Wildman’s committee will be part of a broader probe looking into a number of potential problems that have surfaced at the health agency in recent years.

“Clearly there is an arguable case that the Department of Health Services has not been accountable or responsible to the will of the Legislature,” Wildman said. “The Rocketdyne issue appears to be part of that pattern and will be included in that overall investigation.”

Wildman’s decision to include the allegations concerning Rocketdyne in the Health Department investigation came after Assemblywoman Sheila Kuehl (D-Santa Monica) recently made public several internal department documents.

Kuehl says the documents show a pattern of collusion between the department and Rocketdyne to dissolve a citizens oversight committee and to gain greater control over inquiries into possible community and worker health problems associated with the lab. The 2,600-acre complex near Chatsworth has been the site of decades of nuclear and chemical research.

Wildman’s announcement about the legislative committee’s plans came just days after the state Department of Health Services vowed to launch its own probe into the allegations.

According to Jim Stratton, deputy director of prevention services for the health agency, the internal probe will be handled by an outside auditing agency to avoid any conflicts of interest.

He said he was confident that the investigation would vindicate the department.

Raymond Neutra, chief of the department’s division of environmental and occupational disease control, said he too believes the inquiries would illustrate that neither the department nor Rocketdyne conspired to suppress the study or to influence the citizens committee.

“[These allegations] are terribly unfair to the department and to those people who tried to do their best,” he said. “It’s painful to have legislators you respect say you’ve done something you haven’t. . . . We were not cozy with Rocketdyne, and we never tried to manipulate anything.”

Regarding the cancer survey, which showed a 15% higher level of lung cancer in communities surrounding the lab, Neutra said that it was incomplete and that the methodology was flawed. For example, he noted that it did not look at other factors such as smoking rates, which could help explain the findings.

Wildman said that by next month his committee will have decided how to pursue its inquiry. If there is enough evidence to support the allegations against the health department, the assemblyman said, he will contact the state auditor to launch a more intensive investigation.