KB Homes: Don't miss your chance to be good guys

An independent panel of 17 scientists from around the nation last week released its report on the former Rocketdyne Santa Susana Field Laboratory, confirming years of speculation that the lab's contaminated soil and water were linked to neighboring residents' alleged high rates of cancer. The report is unsettling at best, and downright frightening at worst.

But while tales of a nuclear meltdown in 1959 are worrisome, the city is faced with an issue of much more concern to present-day residents. It's a proposed development called Runkle Canyon.

In 2005, the city gave approval to KB Homes to construct 461 residences on 140 acres of the 1,595acre Runkle Canyon property, which lies just a few miles from the former Rocketdyne testing site.

Simi did so only after receiving and reviewing an Environmental Impact Report from a company hired by GreenPark, the developer who owned the land before KB. The report included detailed soil samples from the property. Although it found evidence of leftover contaminates, the study said the levels were not high enough to be a threat to the public.

Now it appears that report may not tell the whole story.

Though the city has ways to delay construction on the Runkle Canyon property-work is scheduled to start this winter-we hope those methods won't be required.

In this case, KB Homes should step forward and agree to allow time for experts, possibly at the state and/or federal, to take one more look at the property and the possible consequences of grading it.

KB should also pay for another round of soil samples, taken under conditions that would satisfy concerned residents and activists.

If development goes forward, just think of the reaction if even one future resident of the site develops cancer, related or unrelated.

KB Homes has a golden opportunity to be the good guy, to do the right thing. We hope they will.