Rockwell Health Study in Trouble : * Workers: State officials say the $341,000 allocation would cover only the survey’s overhead. Two legislators are outraged.

State health officials said Thursday that $341,000 in federal funds recently allocated for a worker health study at Rockwell International’s Santa Susana Field Laboratory is insufficient to do the long-awaited report.

Kim Hooper of the state Department of Health Services said the money would be enough to cover only the overhead costs associated with the epidemiological survey. He said that although the U.S. Department of Energy has promised $500,000 more next year for the worker study, no guarantees have been made that the money will be forthcoming.

“We want to be upfront with the community,” Hooper said. “You can’t do a study for $341,000.”

Overhead expenses include hiring an independent advisory panel to oversee the survey, renting office space and equipment and printing documents needed for the study.

DOE officials said there is no way to know now whether there will be sufficient funds in next year’s budget to allocate additional money to investigate the health of past and present workers at the Santa Susana lab. The lab is just south of Simi Valley.

Two state legislators who were instrumental in getting the $341,000 for the study said they were outraged by the news. They said they had been assured that $300,000 was to go specifically for the study itself and the remainder to related overhead costs.

“I’m totally shocked and floored,” said Assemblyman Richard Katz (D-Sylmar). “It’s an abandonment of the commitment they made to the community.

“The money was supposed to go for a worker health study, not a bunch of bureaucrats sitting in offices, issuing press releases,” he said. “The community has a right to be concerned and to demand answers.”

Assemblyman Terry B. Friedman (D-Los Angeles) agreed.

“I’m very unhappy,” he said. “We’re certainly going to call them on the carpet for this. This is clearly not what we expected.”

Both of the legislators said they will try to persuade state health officials to redraft their budget for the health study.

Hooper said his department will probably recommend that unless the DOE can guarantee that additional money will be provided next year for the worker health study, the state agency will not go forward with its current plans.

“The DOE has said that it will pay whatever it costs,” Hooper said. “We need now to get some assurances that they are willing to do that.”

The DOE is involved because Rockwell formerly did nuclear work at Santa Susana and still does non-nuclear energy research work for the agency.

Previously, Rockwell officials said there has never been a significant release of contaminants from the 2,668-acre test site in more than 35 years of operation.

But test results announced last month revealed for the first time that low levels of tritium, a form of radioactive hydrogen, had seeped into ground water near the Santa Susana lab. However, environmental officials said the levels were far below the state’s drinking water standards and posed no health risk to the public.

The ground water in the area next to the lab is not used for drinking.