TOXIC SOIL WILL BE TRUCKED DISPOSAL SITE QUESTIONED.

Byline: Erik N. Nelson Staff Writer

SIMI VALLEY - Nearly 800 truckloads of chemically and radioactively tainted soil will be transported from Rocketdyne's former nuclear facilities in Simi Valley through West Valley residential neighborhoods to a Kern County dump beginning Monday.

Under the plan approved by state and federal officials, trucks will carry the contaminated dirt and rubble in 20-minute intervals between 9 a.m. and 4 p.m. through West Hills, Canoga Park and Chatsworth.

Residents and anti-nuclear activists said the dirt is more dangerous than acknowledged by the U.S. Department of Energy and Boeing, Rocketdyne's parent company. They say the dirt should instead should go to a low-level radioactive waste disposal facility in Utah.

``They need to realize that they can't just cart this stuff off site willy-nilly,'' said Lorraine Scott, a member of the Santa Susana Field Laboratory Work Group, who will be among a dozen protesters at the Rocketdyne site Monday morning. ``They need to take it to a legal dump site.''

The main controversy is over the destination site, the Safety-Kleen Buttonwillow Hazardous Waste Disposal Facility, which is 27 miles west of Bakersfield. The landfill is licensed for hazardous, or chemical waste, but not for radioactive waste.

Officials at the U.S. Department of Energy, which is overseeing cleanup of a portion of the Rocketdyne site, said the contaminated material has such a low level of radioactivity that it's not classified as radioactive waste.

``There's an extremely low amount of radioactivity in the shipments, so I don't think the public has any reason to be concerned,'' department spokesman John Belluardo said. ``It will not be harmful to either the public or the environment.''

A spokeswoman for the California Department of Health Services, which oversees the disposal of radioactive waste statewide, also said the hazardous waste facility is the best place for the contaminated soil.

``The material is hazardous waste, not nuclear waste,'' said Lea Brooks, spokeswoman for the state Health Services department. ``Our department oversaw cleanup of radioactive waste at the site several years ago, and that waste was shipped to a low-level radioactive waste disposal site in the state of Washington.''

Working under an Energy Department contract, Rocketdyne conducted nuclear research at the Energy Technology Engineering Center until 1989, when it was closed after Daily News articles exposed chemical and radioactive contamination on the site.

The contaminants are left over from decades of washing down mechanical parts, some from a nuclear reactor, at an open area known as the Sodium Burning Pit that became one of the hilltop nuclear and rocket engine research lab's most polluted sites.

But State Sen. Sheila Kuehl, D-Santa Monica, said she has reservations about the state Department of Health Services' assurances about the safety of the material being shipped.

``Different measurements at different times have shown that at least some of this material may be three or four times background levels,'' Kuehl said of uranium and thorium found in the soil. ``They have to really clarify so that we know that there is absolutely no danger.''

Kuehl said she will ask health services director Diana Bonta to reconcile those reports with the agency's determination that the soil is not low-level radioactive waste.

U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer has also questioned the shipment plan and on Friday was still ``very concerned by the decision to proceed with these shipments'' and is still reviewing state and federal agencies' responses to her questions about the shipments, said Matthew Kagan, Boxer's Southern California director.

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Map: CONTAMINANTS ON THE MOVE