Rocketdyne

Thank you for your editorial demanding that more studies be done on high cancer rates in the San Fernando Valley ("Follow Through on Rocketdyne," July 5). Census tract 1132 has been my home for 27 years. On my street of 15 houses we have had 12 known cancers. I was diagnosed with bladder cancer in 1995, and I am the only cancer survivor in my neighborhood. Those who know me know that my only risk was working at Atomics International and Rocketdyne and living in the neighborhood. I applaud the work done by the advisory panel, Committee to Bridge the Gap, Richard Katz and everyone involved to keep this issue alive.

Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne, the pioneering rocket engine manufacturing business in the San Fernando Valley, has been sold by its parent company of seven years to Sacramento aerospace and technology firm GenCorp Inc. for $550 million. The sale of Rocketdyne to GenCorp marks the combination of two iconic California rocket companies - and longtime competitors. GenCorp also owns Aerojet, the Sacramento aerospace firm founded in 1942. The deal is the latest chapter of consolidation in the aerospace industry, which has unfolded over the last two decades and has cost tens of thousands of jobs throughout the Southland.

I appreciated reading about the Rocketdyne engine testing. Thank you and writer Andrew Revkin for solving the "mystery." The article was both informative and easy to understand. JANET MINAMI Woodland Hills

Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne, the rocket engine manufacturing business in the San Fernando Valley that helped pioneer space exploration in the 1960s, is officially up for sale by its parent company. With headquarters in Canoga Park, Rocketdyne builds rocket engines at a sprawling 47-acre facility near the Westfield Topanga shopping mall. The company is perhaps best known as the maker of the space shuttles' main rocket engines. But it also develops engines for military rockets and missiles.

Exactly when was the U.S. Constitution overthrown? "When somebody can't give you the answers that prove it's legitimate, it is--by default--illegitimate." (FBI agent Michael Templin's statement in the April 28 article on the impending persecution of the management of Rocketdyne, "Agent Called Key to Blast Case.") We may as well go back to trial by ordeal. At least then God could step in and prove the innocence of the accused. RICHARD JEPPERSON Glendale

At a recent public meeting hosted by Rocketdyne, an agitator claimed that all the cleanup done by Rocketdyne at the Santa Susana Field Laboratory was the result of the activists' efforts to "inform the public and push the regulators." That is an easy and attractive claim to make. Even I have called Dan Hirsch (the professional Committee to Bridge the Gap activist) Rocketdyne's best salesman for cleanup projects, but I do that mostly to annoy upper management. In fact, however, the cleanup work at Santa Susana is based on regulatory requirements and good business practices.

A Rocketdyne study of radioactive contamination at part of the company's Santa Susana facility northwest of Chatsworth has found three previously unidentified spots of elevated radioactivity but concludes that most of the area surveyed is uncontaminated. Members of an environmental watchdog group, however, are calling for an independent study to verify Rocketdyne's results. Both the survey and the group's request will be discussed at a meeting tonight at Simi Valley City Hall.

A controversial report on the health of Rocketdyne workers due out next month has been postponed until April so UCLA scientists can do more research, an environmental activist group said Thursday. The Rocketdyne Cleanup Coalition has been pressing for UCLA to release the final draft of the long-awaited report by the original Dec. 6 deadline, said Daniel Hirsch, the group's chief spokesman. But the California Department of Health Services, which is overseeing the report, last week granted the researchers permission to spend more time studying the effects of radiation research on the rate of cancer cases of 5,000 past and present Rocketdyne employees, Hirsch said.

Girding for a court fight against a wing of aerospace giant Boeing, attorneys for nearly 100 neighbors of the Rocketdyne division's Santa Susana Field Laboratory plan to discuss their legal strategy tonight in Simi Valley. The meeting on the neighbors' lawsuit is set for 6:30 p.m. at the Rancho Santa Susana Community Center, 5005 Los Angeles Ave. Ten neighbors sued Boeing North American Inc. in March, alleging that decades of nuclear and chemical research at the mountaintop Rocketdyne complex near Simi Valley poisoned their land and water and caused them to contract cancer.

Neighbors of Rocketdyne's beleaguered Santa Susana Field Laboratory grilled company and U. S. officials Thursday night about its prolonged cleanup of radioactive waste and about charges that two scientists died last year while blowing up rocket fuel to get rid of it. At the same meeting, the U. S. Department of Energy gave a hard estimate on when the cleanup of waste from a 1959 field lab reactor meltdown will be done--2015.

With its armored doors and bulletproof windows, the burly Humvee has been a stalwart ground transport for the U.S. military. But now the Pentagon thinks the hulking vehicle should also be able to fly. On Tuesday, Pratt & Whitney's Rocketdyne division in Canoga Park announced that it had been awarded $1 million to design a propulsion system for a flying Humvee. Don't scoff ? there is good reason for an airborne truck, defense officials say. With the proliferation of improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, on the ground, a hovering Humvee would be an ideal way to keep soldiers out of harm's way, Pentagon officials said in announcing the award.

NASA has taken the next small step toward reshaping its future in space travel by awarding five contracts worth as much as $250 million to aerospace companies for researching and developing propulsion systems. Although NASA hasn't laid out how it will use such technology, officials from the contract winners -- three of which are based in California -- say they envision their work being used on a broad range of missions: sending research equipment deep into space; building thrust engines for robotic Mars landers; or developing boosters for spacecraft to explore far-flung asteroids.

California's top environmental cop Monday rejected an offer to list the contaminated Rocketdyne Santa Susana Field Lab near Simi Valley as a federal Superfund cleanup site, saying the state can do the job quicker and more thoroughly.

Boeing Co. and its operating partners at a former nuclear research and rocket engine testing facility near Simi Valley met a state-imposed deadline this week to propose precise deadlines covering the next decade of its long-term cleanup effort. The state Department of Toxic Substances Control required Boeing, majority owner of the Santa Susana Field Lab, and the U.S.

U.S. Department of Labor officials will be in Simi Valley next week to conduct information sessions for current and former workers of Rocketdyne's Santa Susana Field Laboratory seeking information about federal compensation and medical benefits for those who became ill as a result of working at the former nuclear research facility.

Stung by a federal judge's ruling that its cleanup was inadequate, the Department of Energy announced Thursday that it was temporarily halting plans to raze several buildings at its former nuclear and rocket engine testing facility near Simi Valley while it evaluates the cleanup. State and federal politicians had complained that the DOE was continuing the work at Boeing's Rocketdyne Field Laboratory, despite U.S.

U.S. Rep. Elton Gallegly (R-Simi Valley) has introduced a bill to speed up federal benefit payments to former workers of Rocketdyne's Santa Susana Field Laboratory who can link their illnesses to their jobs at the onetime Department of Energy facility. In the last seven years, 355 former employees have filed 677 benefit claims against the DOE, but only 56 claims have been paid, according to Gallegly's office. The claims were filed under the Energy Employees Illness Compensation Act.

Environmental activists won a major victory Wednesday when a judge declared that the U.S. Department of Energy continues to violate federal law in its cleanup of nuclear and chemical contamination at Boeing's Rocketdyne field laboratory near Simi Valley. U.S.