LAB WASTE TO STAY? DOE PLANS TO LEAVE RADIOACTIVE SOIL AT ROCKETDYNE SITE.

Byline: Beth Barrett Staff Writer

Lawmakers and environmentalists accused the U.S. Department of Energy on Tuesday of ignoring public demands to thoroughly clean up soils laced with low-level radioactive waste at the former Rocketdyne nuclear research facility in the Simi Hills.

DOE officials have recommended leaving about 98 percent - or 30,000 truckloads - of the contaminated soil in place in the hills between Chatsworth and Simi Valley - a decision that would increase cancer-risk rates by up to 300 times over the level sought by the community.

Critics have challenged the DOE plan in great part because the site could be developed for homes or other uses once the cleanup is completed.

The DOE-recommended standard for the cleaning up of its portion of the Santa Susana Field Laboratory would allow a risk rate of 300 cancers per million people at a maximum exposure from the site, compared with one per million.

State Sen. Sheila Kuehl, a Democrat who represents the area from Santa Monica to the southern end of the San Fernando Valley, charged the DOE with ``caving'' to business and other interests, rather than listening to residents who must live near the lab.

Kuehl, who said she is drafting legislation that would impose the higher cleanup standard that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency encourages at its Superfund cleanup sites, said the DOE misled residents in recommending a cleanup standard she called ``way too low'' with an ``acceptable cancer risk rate'' that's too high.

``It's worse than dissing the public,'' Kuehl said. ``It's sort of building up hopes of a fair process in which you might participate, and then they (DOE officials) say 'Thank you very much for your input, but we're going to ignore it.'''

An issue since 1989

Cleaning up contamination at the Santa Susana Field Laboratory has been an issue since 1989 when the Daily News disclosed that 40 years of rocket and nuclear fuel research had left extensive contamination.

U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., is also concerned with the DOE recommendation, her spokesman Howard Gantman said.

He said she had hoped ``they (DOE) would have moved aggressively to do the higher standard,'' and that she intends to urge the DOE to reconsider its recommendation. She also plans to renew her request to EPA Administrator Christine Todd Whitman to require the higher standard.

``We want to be able to assure the community that the area is safe,'' Gantman said.

The proposal to leave nearly 30,000 truckloads of contaminated soil at the former Cold War nuclear research facility will be the subject of two ``public input'' sessions Thursday at the Grand Vista Hotel, 999 Enchanted Way in Simi Valley. The two-hour sessions will begin at 2 p.m. and at 7 p.m.

Whitman eight months ago reassured both Feinstein and Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., the agency would ``ensure that the cleanup is consistent with Superfund cleanup standards'' although the facility is not on the Superfund list.

Whitman's spokeswoman Steffanie Bell said Tuesday that the EPA administrator remains committed to making sure ``the cleanup of Santa Susana Field Laboratory is protective of the public and the environment.''

A regional EPA official added that the agency wants ``the best cleanup possible'' at all contaminated sites.

``If (a cancer risk of one in a million) is reasonable and possible, that's what we like to see,'' said Larry Bowerman, chief of the EPA's Region 9 Resource Conservation and Recovery Act Corrective Action Office in San Francisco.

Daniel Hirsch, president of Committee to Bridge the Gap, a nonprofit nuclear watchdog group and a monitor of the site for years, charged the DOE with hiding behind an interpretation of federal regulations that would allow it to end the cleanup three years sooner, by DOE estimates, and at far less cost.

``In human terms, this means ... kids will be playing on top of that 98 percent of contaminated soil that was left in place,'' Hirsch said, if the site were sold for development because of its panoramic views of the San Fernando and Simi valleys.

Boeing response

Dan Beck, a spokesman for The Boeing Co., which now owns Rocketdyne, said the company is committed to a cleanup that protects the public's health. ``We haven't foreclosed any option, including residential.''

Beck called ``hyperbolic'' assertions by Hirsch and others that the DOE is signaling the end of the cleanup - which still would continue through 2008 at an estimated total cost of $258 million - saying the DOE has committed to more detailed environmental examinations at the facility if warranted.

A DOE official in Oakland said the recommended standard for the cleanup falls within the EPA's ``range'' for land that can then be released for use, including homes, and that the agency responsibly considered the public's concerns.

``We were trying to be responsive to the public,'' said Mike Lopez, the DOE's Oakland manager of the environmental restoration project for the part of the lab known as the Energy Technology Engineering Center. ``We felt obliged to give it (the lower cancer risk rate option) serious consideration.''

Lopez said the DOE believes that the proposed standard will adequately protect the public while avoiding transporting nearly 400,000 cubic meters of soil contaminated with low-level radioactive waste - or enough to cover about 290 football fields with a one-foot layer of dirt - through streets and on freeways to disposal sites.

``There are trade-offs,'' Lopez said. ``There are transportation accidents. One issue that gets people's attention is traffic. This would most likely go down Woolsey Canyon Road, down Plummer or Roscoe.''

If the DOE's preferred option were adopted, only 7,500 cubic meters of soil contaminated with the low-level radioactive waste would be removed from a 90-acre portion of the 270-acre DOE lab, leaving the rest virtually untouched since it already meets the higher cancer-risk standard.

``Our review is not done until the comment period is completed,'' Lopez added.

Community activists representing hundreds of thousands of residents within a 10-mile radius have demanded that the land be scrubbed thoroughly before being reused, particularly since health studies by the University of California, Los Angeles, showed worker exposure to external radiation at the nuclear research lab was associated with elevated cancer death rates.

Peter Strauss, president of the San Francisco consulting firm PM Strauss & Associates, said he has worked on several Superfund sites in the state in which community pressure was instrumental in getting government agencies to clean up the sites to lower cancer risk rates.

``If there are strong communities, they (regulators) try to push to get to (a risk rate at, or near, one cancer per million), unless they can show there are really good technical reasons why they can't,'' Strauss said.

``It's about money,'' he said. ``DOE's budget has been cut back a good deal. If something is going to be cut, it's going to be cleanup.''

Lopez disputed that money played a role in the recommendation, saying the DOE is expressly prohibited from weighing cost against health and safety.

``It didn't figure into it.''

MEETINGS PLANNED

The U.S. Department of Energy will hold two ``public input'' sessions Thursday on its proposal for cleaning up radioactive contamination at the Santa Susana Field Lab in the Simi Hills. The two-hour sessions will be held at the Grand Vista Hotel, 999 Enchanted Way, Simi Valley, starting at 2 p.m. and at 7 p.m.

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MEETINGS PLANNED (see text)