Time for Straight Answers

For half a century, the U.S. Navy has been an important member of the Ventura County community. For the most part, it has been a good neighbor.

That’s why it seemed so out of character when Navy officials appeared to brush off questions of nearby residents about possible radiation hazards from its Port Hueneme radar test facility.

After more than three years of increasingly urgent inquiries, a Navy commander recently conceded that his crew cannot locate environmental reports that allowed the 50,000-square-foot Surface Warfare Engineering Facility to be built, although he insists the five-story lab is safe. The Navy agreed to cooperate with an independent panel of biomedical, environmental and radar experts that will evaluate the safety of the facility.

“Because we can’t produce the documents, it allows the perception to be made that we are hiding something,” said Capt. J.W. “Stretch” Phillips, commander of the Naval Surface Warfare Center. “We have to convince the majority of the populace that we have taken reasonable steps to ensure their safety.”

That is something an area residents group called The Beacon Foundation has been seeking for years, with growing support from the California Coastal Commission. At a Coastal Commission meeting earlier this month, the Navy agreed to work with the federal Office of Ocean and Coastal Resource Management, which will select the three panel members. After panelists are approved by the Navy and the Coastal Commission next month, the panel will begin reviewing residents’ health concerns and the Navy’s responses.

The Times salutes the Navy for moving to provide some straight answers to the legitimate questions of people who are raising their families within a few hundred years of this lab, which bristles with a variety of high-tech and high-powered radar systems. We hope the panel will confirm the Navy’s assertion that any potential radiation is infrequent, harmless and directed away from populated areas. To ensure that the report proves more satisfying than the Navy’s previous responses, we urge that an impartial citizen observer be included on the panel.

The Surface Warfare Engineering Facility (SWEF) was built in 1985. It is used to test and evaluate weapons and radar systems and to simulate shipboard problems. Residents of nearby Silver Strand Beach began questioning the Navy about the building in 1996. While fighting a Navy proposal that would have allowed jets to fly at high speeds and low altitudes to test radar equipment, residents said they began to realize how little they knew about the radar building. Their skepticism grew when Navy officials said they didn’t have the original documentation. Beacon suspects no environmental studies were ever done at all.

Capt. Phillips told the Coastal Commission that the Navy allowed a “breach of public trust” in the way it handled public concerns over the facility.

We welcome this action to repair that breach and encourage the Navy to follow through and provide the answers that will restore the good relationship between Ventura County’s Navy bases and their civilian neighbors.