Firm to Cease Weapons Tests With Explosives : Santa Clarita: After noise complaints and to avoid a permit hearing, a defense contractor decides to relocate some of its work.

A defense contractor that tested weapons using explosives on a once-remote facility in Santa Clarita will no longer do so because of complaints from neighbors about noise, a company spokesman announced Monday.

The company, National Technical Systems, has laid off 20 employees and moved its AT4 anti-tank weapon testing program from a 165-acre site south of Soledad Canyon Road.

The action followed complaints from residents of the Friendly Valley area. The community for senior citizens is about 1 1/2 miles away, said Robert I. Snyder, the firm’s attorney.

“As urbanization occurs, facilities like ours have been forced to curtail their activities with a resultant displacement of jobs,” Snyder said. “We agreed to move the program on the basis of complaints about a program that was going to cause grief.”

In the testing program, explosives are detonated in the weapons to gauge the strength of the metal tubes. The program has been temporarily moved to Boron in Kern County and eventually will be run in Camden, Ark., Snyder said. The company will continue to operate other programs at the Santa Clarita site, including crash and roll tests of automobiles, he said.

City officials said residents have been complaining about the noise for at least two years. The tests, which occurred nearly every hour two days a month, were stepped up during the Gulf War, prompting more complaints, Snyder said.

“It kind of startles you. It’s like a loud boom,” said Cecile Ceurvorst, one of about 3,000 people who live in the Friendly Valley area. “My husband is a realtor and when he would show property here, people would ask about the noise.”

Rich Henderson, principal planner for the city, said it conducted noise tests but “when we took a meter to some lady’s kitchen, the needle didn’t even move.”

However, city code enforcement officers found that the firm did not have a conditional-use permit required under city law to store more than 100 pounds of explosives on the property, Henderson said. Such a permit was not required by Los Angeles County when the company began its testing operations in the 1960s, he said.

Rather than undergo a public hearing to obtain such a permit, NTS decided to move its weapon testing program, Henderson said.

Snyder said the firm disputes the necessity of obtaining such a permit, but moved the program “to be a good neighbor.”