Katz Calls on State Officials to Oppose Rockwell's License : Environment: The assemblyman says the company and the DOE play 'radioactive Russian roulette' at a laboratory west of Chatsworth.

By MYRON LEVIN

Oct. 17, 1989 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

State Assemblyman Richard Katz (D-Sylmar) Monday called on Gov. George Deukmejian and Attorney General John Van de Kamp to join anti-nuclear activists in opposing Rockwell International’s request to renew a license to work with nuclear materials at its Santa Susana Field Laboratory west of Chatsworth.

In identical five-page letters, Katz urged Deukmejian and Van de Kamp to seek legal status to intervene before the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission so they could fight Rockwell’s application for a 10-year license extension to operate the nuclear “hot lab” at Santa Susana.

“I believe that the unholy alliance of the Department of Energy and Rockwell has been and continues to play radioactive Russian roulette with the health and safety of the people in the San Fernando Valley,” Katz said in the letters.

In making public the letters, Katz asked if there should “be any new nuclear work at all in densely populated areas like Los Angeles.” He said there are restrictions on “how far away from a school a bar must be . . . or a magazine rack must be, but not nuclear materials.”

Spokesmen in Deukmejian’s and Van de Kamp’s offices said late Monday they had not seen and could not comment on Katz’s letters.

An administrative judge for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has set an early November deadline for persons seeking to intervene and gain legal standing to file formal evidence in the case.

From the mid-1950s to the early 1980s, Rockwell operated 16 small nuclear reactors at Santa Susana for the DOE and also fabricated nuclear fuel. In recent years, most of the nuclear work there has involved cleaning up contamination from past activities.

Until 1986, the hot lab was used to declad nuclear fuel--dismantling the fuel and removing plutonium and uranium for shipment to government reservations for use in nuclear weapons and fuel for naval ships. The company is seeking renewal of the hot lab license in hopes of gaining future decladding contracts from DOE.

A second Valley lawmaker--Assemblyman Terry Friedman (D-Los Angeles)--also weighed in on the issue Monday, saying he would push for funds and legal authority for state health officials to regulate the nuclear side of Rockwell’s business.

The current situation--in which most health and safety oversight is done by DOE itself--is “like the fox guarding the chicken coop,” said Friedman, whose district includes much of the Valley’s southern rim.

“It’s totally unacceptable to have an entity, DOE, operate as well as regulate its own operations,” Friedman said. “I don’t believe that we can rely on DOE either to monitor or clean up its own mess.”

Both lawmakers appeared in Van Nuys at a public hearing of the Assembly Ways and Means subcommittee on health and welfare, which Friedman chairs. The hearing, which attracted about 55 residents and state officials to the Van Nuys State Office Building auditorium, was called by Friedman to investigate whether the state should play a role in regulating nuclear activities at Santa Susana and other DOE sites in California.

Friedman, whose subcommittee oversees the state Department of Health Services, said he would seek to augment its state funding, if money is not provided by the DOE, to allow it to monitor Santa Susana and similar sites.

Friedman called inadequate a plan by state health officials to ask the DOE for a grant of $250,000 per year to enable three state employees to perform independent testing in and around Santa Susana and six other DOE sites in California.

Don J. Womeldorf, chief of the environmental management branch of the state Department of Health Services, acknowledged that the state’s proposal did not envision a regulatory role for state health officials, who are prevented by provisions of the federal Atomic Energy Act from asserting control over health and safety at DOE nuclear sites.

The DOE, seeking to blunt criticism that it is insensitive to environmental concerns, has offered the states money and a role in overseeing its energy and weapons sites, without relinquishing regulatory authority. It recently concluded an agreement allowing the state of Colorado oversight of the Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant, managed by Rockwell for the last 14 years.

Friedman contended that the state should be directly involved in monitoring and cleanup work at DOE sites. Womeldorf said health officials will discuss asking the DOE for funding and a contract that would authorize the state to play an active role in regulating the sites.

Both Friedman and Katz also said they would press the state Department of Health Services to conduct a health study of Santa Susana workers and neighbors to see if they have suffered unexpected rates of illness which might be linked to exposure to radioactive materials.

Citations Likely

In another development Monday, state health officials said they expect to cite Rockwell for at least three violations of hazardous waste rules at Santa Susana, which could result in tens of thousands of dollars in penalties.

The hearing showcased the confusing array of federal, state and county agencies with some responsibility for environmental oversight of the 2,668-acre Santa Susana lab at the eastern end of Ventura County, southeast of Simi Valley.

For example, even though Katz was blasting the relationship between Rockwell and the DOE, the nuclear license for the hot lab is issued by another federal agency, the NRC. But most of the nuclear areas of Santa Susana are under option to DOE and thus are exempt from NRC authority. The hot lab is owned and controlled by Rockwell. Even if the NRC license were denied, which is considered unlikely, that would not prevent Rockwell from carrying out nuclear projects in the DOE areas.

Most of the Santa Susana complex is devoted to rocket testing for the Air Force and NASA. A 290-acre area is reserved for nuclear and other energy work for the DOE.

State health officials testified at the hearing that they will take action against Rockwell on at least three of thirteen counts of hazardous waste violations alleged in August in a preliminary charge known as a “report of violations.”

During his testimony, Dennis Dickerson, regional administrator of the Health Department’s toxic substances control division, said Rockwell “in discussions with us . . . has admitted three violations.” Two of the violations involve failure to meet a six-month deadline to complete cleanup of chemical waste disposal ponds. The other involves failure to keep records of inspections of chemical waste storage tanks.

8 More Counts

Dickerson said the agency has decided to drop two other counts and is considering Rockwell’s response to the remaining eight counts, which involve chemical rather than radioactive pollution, mainly in non-DOE areas of Santa Susana.

Since the violations are punishable by fines of up to $10,000 per day in an administrative action, or up to $25,000 per day if the state takes the matter to court, the penalties could amount to tens of thousands of dollars. Rockwell officials could not be reached for comment.

But Dickerson drew the ire of Friedman and Katz when he alluded to “toxic hysteria” over Santa Susana and some other waste sites.

He described the lab as “somewhere in the mid-range of toxic sites that we are aware of in the Los Angeles area and throughout the state of California.” He said pollution at Santa Susana is low-level and “fairly localized,” adding: “There is simply no way that material is getting into public water supplies, for example.”

Friedman rebuked Dickerson, reminding him that his agency doesn’t deal with the radioactive side of pollution on the site. Thus the reassurances “aren’t even capable of covering the whole range of risks and dangers that are posed,” Friedman said.

But Dickerson said he’d concluded from available data that levels of radioactive contamination “are again, very low” and “very localized.”