THE RADIATION RANGERS
Indeed, this tiny CDHS number doesn’t even match the risk from strontium-90 at the Runkle Canyon site as claimed by Al Boughey, Simi Valley’s director of Environmental Services. In letter to the City Manager Mike Sedell last August 23, Boughey wrote, “[B]ased on the levels of strontium-90 on the site, the calculations indicate an increased cancer risk of 0.26 cases of cancer in a million… [B]ased on the concentration of strontium-90 and the cancer risk associated with that concentration, exposure to dust at the site would not [their emphasis] pose a public health risk on or off site.”
This number used by Boughey is still 578 times higher than CDHS’s estimate. Neither set of numbers reinforces faith in the credible science practices of the department or the city.
Further undermining the department’s credibility are the public comments made recently by Robert Greger of the Radiological Health Branch of CDHS. At an April 19 meeting of the Santa Susana Field Laboratory Work Group in Simi Valley, Greger seemed a bit tenuous about the department’s conclusions about Runkle Canyon. “Department of Health Services doesn’t really know what the status is there,” Greger told the crowd of around 80 people. “So we still don’t understand the situation.”
Apparently, Sacramento doesn’t understand the situation with the Radiological Health Branch of CDHS, either. In late May, 12 state senators, including Sen. Sheila Kuehl (D- Santa Monica) and Sen. Gloria Romero (D-Los Angeles) sent a letter to the Joint Legislative Audit Committee communicating their concern that the branch may be “engaged in an unauthorized de facto deregulation of the handling and disposal of [low-level radioactive waste].”
“My experience with the radiological health branch over time is that they have become – I won’t say captured – but somewhat sympathetic to the industry,” Kuehl told Sacramento-based Capitol Weekly. “We just need a lot more information. We need to know why they may have been helping the industry skirt some of the regulations.”
Kuehl is the author of new legislation that would require that Rocketdyne be cleaned up to most stringent EPA Superfund standards which aim for no more than a one-in-a-million chance of contracting a fatal cancer from any particular chemical or radionuclide. SB 990 was approved in a 21-16 vote May 21 in a huge victory for environmentalists and will move to the Assembly for consideration.
The legislation comes on the heels of a momentous EPA decision to reevaluate the old Rocketdyne lab for inclusion as a Superfund site, a designation it didn’t grant during its 2003 evaluation. Both U.S. Senators Boxer and Feinstein support putting it on the Superfund National Priorities List.
“EPA said it would take them about nine months to do that evaluation,” said Rocketdyne watchdog Dan Hirsch at the April 19 community meeting in Simi Valley. “The last time they undertook such a review, it wasn’t completed for about five years. They have done this evaluation twice before – twice before they have not listed it. The difference this time, they say, is that they will consider the entire site, not just [the nuclear area], and consider chemical contamination, not just radioactive.”
“Their formula is that you have to have people living on the site to be able to qualify as a Superfund site no matter how contaminated the site is,” Hirsch continued. “It doesn’t get to be Superfund until people move onto it. I wouldn’t hold your breath about the Superfund designation.”
Hirsch’s dour prediction might be mitigated by a May 2 court ruling by U.S. District Judge Samuel Conti, who slammed the Bush administration’s Department of Energy (DOE) study of radioactive contamination at Rocketdyne, a study that adopted a cleanup standard that would expose future residents to elevated risks of cancer far higher than the EPA allows.
The DOE study, which concluded that their $258 million cleanup of the nuclear area of the lab would leave no significant environmental impact, had been criticized by the EPA, Boxer and Feinstein, and the state of California. Hirsch’s group, the Santa Cruz-based Committee to Bridge the Gap, sued the DOE over these lax radiation standards in a 2004 lawsuit along with the Natural Resources Defense Council and the city of Los Angeles.
Conti said, among other things, that DOE discounted groundwater contamination, overlooked the combined effects of chemical and radioactive contamination, and employed a radiation standard that would give each exposed person a 3-in-10,000 chance of contracting a fatal cancer. The DOE standard “improperly placed future residents of the site at an increased cancer risk many times higher than CERCLA (the federal toxic cleanup law) allows,” the judge said, noting that the SSFL is surrounded by millions of people who should be assured that the government is cleaning up the facility to the highest cleanup standards. “It is difficult to imagine a situation where the need for such an assurance could be greater,” Conti continued.
“Over and over again, I’ve had neighbors tell me that they were unaware of the nature of activities up at the SSFL,” said Coryell. “They don’t understand why the city isn’t demanding that Rocketdyne clean up the lab and adjacent land to EPA Superfund standards. In a city that undertakes a comprehensive marketing campaign to educate citizens about parking enforcement strategy, no effort has been made to increase public awareness with respect to Rocketdyne’s impact on our environment. Why?”
