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Santa Susana Field Lab pollution hazards endure

Posted by: Maven on June 22, 2009 at 7:11 am

From the Daily News:

Before they learned words like dioxin and perchlorate, mothers let sons and daughters play near streams that trickled down from hills that hid some of the government’s biggest secrets. Families who settled in neighborhoods blooming in Chatsworth, West Hills and Simi Valley led idyllic lives, even when their bedroom and kitchen windows rattled from the roar of rocket engines being tested at the Santa Susana Field Laboratory in the Simi Hills.

But in May 1989, surveys from the Department of Energy – reported exclusively in the Daily News – revealed that radioactive and toxic contamination from decades of nuclear experiments and rocket tests had leaked into soil, groundwater and bedrock at the hilltop site.

Now, 20 years after the 210-page report became public, a full-scale, government-ordered cleanup has yet to start. Community activists worry that if the cleanup doesn’t begin soon under the land’s current ownership, part of the property may be sold, leading to an inadequate cleanup under new owners and possibly clearing the way for construction of an undesirable prison or Indian casino.

“The story that has evolved in 20 years is from coverup to a dribble of information about the real situation there,” said former state Sen. Sheila Kuehl, who authored a 2007 law that prohibits the sale or transfer of the site until the state certifies it has been properly decontaminated. “There was a realization among residents around the site that their health may have been seriously compromised by both emissions of air and groundwater and the fact that there was no serious intention by the government to clean the site,” Kuehl said. “It started a consciousness but there has been nothing but roadblocks all the way.”

Read more from the Daily News by clicking here.

June 22, 2009 · Filed Under Groundwater, Southern California

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