FEDERAL OFFICIALS TO DEFEND CLEANUP.

Byline: Kerry Cavanaugh Staff Writer

Federal officials will defend their cleanup plan for the Santa Susana Field Lab on Wednesday - the first public presentation the Department of Energy has made since announcing it would clean up just 2 percent of the nuclear contamination at the Simi Valley site.

The presentation comes as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced last week it is scaling back its oversight of the former nuclear research facility decontamination. The EPA was brought in by the community as an independent consultant to review the DOE's work.

However, the two agencies have not agreed on an appropriate cleanup and the EPA has no authority to force a more stringent DOE decontamination plan. So EPA officials said the agency is pulling back from the project and will provide input ``after analyzing our ability to impact final decisions.''

The DOE announced in April it had chosen the less-stringent of two cleanup plans, which would eventually leave the site with 300 times greater potential cancer risk.

DOE chose a cleanup standard of 15 millirem per year extra dose of radiation to someone living on the site for 40 years. That would be an additional 1 in 3,333 cancer-death risk.

The agency said that standard would be safe enough for people to live on the land.

``It's protective of human health and the environment,'' project manager Mike Lopez said.

Community activists and political leaders have urged the DOE to clean up the property to the EPA's more protective standard of an additional 0.05 millirem per year exposure. That would be a 1-in-1 million potential cancer risk.

The difference of opinions on what is safe has prompted fury among field lab neighbors. U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein stuck a note in the Energy Bill urging the DOE to go with the EPA's cleanup plan. She charged the DOE is ignoring a 1995 agreement to clean up DOE nuclear sites to EPA standards - however, the EPA has no regulatory power over the lab decontamination.

DOE officials responded that the cleanup standard ``meets the level that EPA has stated is fully protective of human health.''

Feinstein also urged the DOE to fund an independent EPA survey of radiological contamination, but officials announced last week that funding was not available and the survey was canceled.

Watchdogs and community activists have pushed for the EPA to conduct an independent study because they don't trust the DOE's findings. Federal environmental regulators had concerns of their own at the old nuclear research lab and agreed to survey the leftover contamination if the DOE funded the study.

Dan Hirsch, a nuclear watchdog who sits on the field lab monitoring group, has pushed for the independent study.

``At least the public would have one warning from an agency that this site is not safe,'' Hirsch said.

The Santa Susana Field Laboratory Workgroup, composed of five community residents and representatives of eight federal, state and local agencies, is supposed to funnel information to the public on the cleanup at the former rocket-testing site. The EPA heads the group.

Wednesday's agenda also includes discussion of a decision by the EPA not to include the field lab on its priority list because there's nobody living on the site and the contamination levels aren't high enough to pose an immediate threat.

Kerry Cavanaugh, [phone]

kerry.cavanaugh(at)dailynews.com

IF YOU GO

The Santa Susana Field Laboratory Workgroup will meet 6:30-10 p.m. Wednesday at the Grand Vista Hotel, 999 Enchanted Way, Simi Valley.

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IF YOU GO (see text)