Rocketdyne Facility Draws Protests in Simi Valley

More than 50 residents vented their long-standing frustrations with a nearby Rocketdyne facility Wednesday night and heard scientists detail a new health study sponsored by the federal government.

The $600,000 Santa Susana Public Health Initiative is expected to start later this month and should be complete within three years, said officials with the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, a division of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

UCLA scientists and the Eastern Research Group Inc. will conduct the study, which seeks to assess whether accidents or long-term operations at the rocket testing site have any correlation with cancer rates in area residents or any measurable impact on the surrounding environment.

But many of those at Wednesday’s meeting expressed skepticism about the seriousness of the new study. It comes a year after the federal agency’s preliminary report, which found no evidence that decades of rocket testing at the Santa Susana Field Laboratory had harmed the health of neighbors in Simi Valley or the San Fernando Valley.

Rocketdyne, now a division of Boeing Corp., conducted nuclear and rocket-engine tests at the facility for decades during the height of the Cold War.