Rocketdyne’s Cleanup

* Re “Rocketdyne’s Safety Record,” Ventura County Letters, Aug. 30.

Letter writer Barbara Johnson defends Beverly Kelley against criticism of her editorial column (Ventura County Perspective, Aug. 6). Yet Johnson’s defense fails for the same reason that Kelley’s column fails. Both are using a selective mixture of facts that distort the truth regarding the environmental and safety record at Rocketdyne’s Santa Susana Field Laboratory.

Johnson questions Rocketdyne’s exemplary safety record by leaving the impression that Rocketdyne is in violation of standards that do not apply. The standards that Rocketdyne uses in its cleanup are those imposed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the agency with jurisdiction over the cleanup. The Environmental Protection Agency uses standards that are slightly lower than the NRC’s, and these are the standards that Johnson and Kelley claims Rocketdyne is in “violation” of.

It sounds sinister. It sounds like Rocketdyne and that nasty NRC should use those lower standards. Except for the fact that there is no health advantage to the EPA standards, and the difference appears to be due more to governmental bureaucracy than any real scientific data.

In fact, the General Accounting Office, the independent overseer of fiscal responsibility for the government, recently issued a report that blasts the difference in the standards and any implied benefits. In its report, the GAO noted that the differences amounted to little more than 3% of what the average American is exposed to in a given year from normal background sources. It also explained that the difference in cleanup levels was about three hundredths of 1% of what is known to cause cancer.

The GAO questioned if cleaning to these arbitrary lower standards was worth the additional taxpayer cost and recommended that the agencies quit trying to contradict each other and work together for common standards.

THOMAS R. TARN

Rocketdyne employee

Simi Valley