PLANS FOR HOUSES NEAR LAB A CONCERN.

Byline: Kerry Cavanaugh Staff Writer

Although officials and documents say soil or water was never tested for toxics and radioactivity, developers are poised to break ground on a 147-home project downhill from the Santa Susana Field Lab - and outraged environmental activists are demanding a review.

Approved by the city in 2001, the Sterling Homes development would build luxury houses about 1.3 miles east of the Simi Hills lab, where a partial nuclear meltdown occurred in 1959, and Boeing continues testing rocket engines.

State and federal officials are overseeing the cleanup of chemical and radioactive pollution at the lab, and regulators have detected contamination on some neighboring properties - though they have not tested for the long list of problem pollutants directly on the Sterling Homes land.

A spokesman for Centex, which purchased the project from the original developer, SunCal Homes, said records show that all environmental requirements were met as part of the approval process for what was then called Dayton Canyon Estates.

But documents buried deep in city archives show that the developer's consultants based their assessment on only a visual survey of the property and never actually sampled soil or water or tested for toxic contaminants.

``Given the scope of services for this assessment were limited, and that soil and groundwater sampling or analytical testing for contamination were not undertaken, it is possible that currently unrecognized contamination may exist at the site,'' the environmental impact statement concludes.

Nearby residents now worry there may be hidden chemical or radioactive contamination that could become airborne during construction or endanger new homeowners, and they are calling for further analysis.

``It's insane that this development has passed an environmental impact report in Los Angeles without even one test,'' said Bonnie Klea of West Hills, a former secretary at the Santa Susana Field Lab.

``You're not going to see this stuff on the surface. It just seemed to me to be so ridiculous to look at property that's a mile from a test site and nuclear facility and be able to think you can tell there's something wrong with it just by looking at it.''

Late Friday, Centex spokesman Ken Smalling said the company had just discovered maps showing that some sort of tests had been done on the site by SunCal, but that Centex officials didn't know specifically what was done or what the results were.

``We're a responsible builder of family communities, and will continue testing and evaluation as the project progresses during its development phase,'' Smalling said.

Klea and her neighbors say they tried for the last year to get help from Councilmen Dennis Zine and Greig Smith, but only recently got the officials' attention.

Zine said he has serious concerns about the lack of tests conducted during the environmental review process. He vowed to enlist the City Attorney's Office, if necessary, to ensure the soil and water on the site are analyzed.

``I'm not going to let him proceed when there's still a question mark when it comes to safety,'' said Zine, whose district abuts the proposed development.

Smith, whose district includes Dayton Canyon and who worked for then-Councilman Hal Bernson when the project was approved, has asked the Planning Department to go back and ensure the plans were properly scrutinized.

``We want to make sure we followed the letter of the law and that we went the extra mile,'' said Smith's chief of staff, Mitchell Englander.

Sterling Homes promises luxury Spanish-theme homes in lush, oak-lined Dayton Canyon, which was annexed to the city in 2001. There were concerns about traffic the project would generate along Roscoe Boulevard and Valley Circle, but toxic contamination wasn't among the chief concerns.

Emily Gabel Luddy, who oversees the environmental review section of the Los Angeles Planning Department, said planners relied heavily on input from other agencies.

``This environmental review was sent to the state of California and we received no comments from any of the agencies responsible.''

State officials said it was the city's responsibility to determine environmental hazards.

``They're the ones who approved the project. They're the ones who did the EIR. Our department, our focus is Santa Susana,'' said Jeanne Garcia, a representative of the California Department of Toxic Substances Control, which is overseeing the chemical cleanup at the lab.

The Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board several years ago found perchlorate - a chemical that can cause thyroid problems - leaking into Dayton Canyon Creek from a former rocket-fuel storage area at the field lab.

Boeing removed tons of perchlorate-tainted soil from the lab, and the water board tested soil at Chatsworth Reservoir and Dayton Canyon, near the Sterling Homes project, in 2003 but found no perchlorate.

``That test was there to confirm the information we already had from sampling'' from the field lab, said Water Board Executive Officer Jon Bishop. ``If we had found anything in the sample, we would have done more testing.''

On the Ventura County side of the field lab, Simi Valley and Ventura County officials have required some testing of soil and groundwater in nearby development projects.

Last year the Board of Supervisors passed a new ordinance that requires new projects to test for the toxic solvent TCE and rocket-fuel chemical perchlorate before approval.

Boeing officials have said they believe the contamination remains encapsulated on top of the hill, with tainted groundwater trapped in rock that acts like a sponge.

``There's no evidence of any kind of contamination or pollution that we're aware of on that (Sterling Homes) property,'' Boeing spokesman John Mitchell said. ``We do ongoing testing of surface water. We're certainly aware of what goes off-site.''

Kerry Cavanaugh, [phone]

kerry.cavanaugh(at)dailynews.com

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Dayton Canyon Estates: proposed 150 homes

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