Simi Valley City Council Excerpts – October 22, 2007
The Ventura County Reporter cover story “Dirty Business – New law cleaning up Rocketdyne for parkland may not stop adjacent KB Home development pushed by Simi Valley City Council” included quotes culled from these selected excerpts.
The speakers, who were limited to three minutes apiece in public comment, included “Toxic Terry” Matheney and “The Good Reverend John” Southwick of the Radiation Rangers who have a website called StopRunkledyne.com.
Christina Walsh, of CleanUpRocketdyne.org and Mary Wiesbrock of Save Open Space also spoke along with a total of twelve citizens. After the residents spoke, various council members and the mayor addressed the issue even though the issue wasn’t agendized.
The City of Simi Valley’s website has archives of their city council meetings, including this one. On the Live and Archived Media page, you can watch the public comments by ‘jumping’ in the video section to “3A. Public Statements” which include comments by Mayor Paul Miller at the end of them. Further council comments can be watched by ‘jumping’ to “3B. City Council/Special District Reports.”
Selected sequential excerpts:
PUBLIC STATEMENTS
Brigham Maher:
“Regarding Runkle Canyon, I am very curious why you want to kill me? Why do you want to kill my family? Why do you want to kill my friends? And why do you want to kill yourselves in the whole process? Runkle Canyon is contaminated. There’s lots of tests out there stating the facts. It’s right down from the worst nuclear meltdown in American history. You all need to wake up because it really seems to me that you guys want to build on that land; you want KB Homes to build on that land and, you know, that’s going to destroy lives and you don’t even realize it. I mean if there are readings of strontium-90 in that soil to any extent, digging that up and bringing it into the air that we breathe, do you realize what that’s going to do? I mean, do you guys even care? I mean I’m just really curious – I really am and that’s all I really have to say.”
Adam Salkin:
“I think the only safe thing to do is not to build houses right up against the Santa Susana Field Lab, a site that is known to be one of the most dangerous places in our country, a site that is so dangerous that an agreement has been made by the State not to build houses on it and now I believe that that same agreement for contaminated land that surrounds this site.”
Rev. John Southwick:
“I think you all have strong feelings about what Nancy Reagan used to say. And one of her big points was ‘Just Say No.’ And that’s what you folks have got to do with KB – just say no. This project should not be built without a new EIR.”
Stephanie Hyatt:
“My family and I own two businesses here in Simi Valley and we feel very very strongly about the atmosphere that you’ve created for us to work here, to live here, to play here. We’re just very very concerned about your choices with Runkle Canyon. As a business owner, we would love to see more people in the community but this is not the right thing to do. This is not the right thing to do.”
“We know the environmental hazards – everyone is reading the paper. We all have concerns about the environmental hazards there. I don’t want the dust coming up and my kids swimming in the pool and that in my backyard. we’ve had many cancers in our family. It’s not a fun thing to do. It just seems like all that the testing that’s been done raises so many questions, so many questions. KB Homes stands to profit so much from this project. Why can’t they do a new EIR to allay our fears and to make sure that it is the right thing to do because right now, to the public, it doesn’t look like the right thing to do. There are good ways and there are good growth opportunities in this city – this is not one of them. Not yet. It just seems like KB is so quick to just push this project along and it’s in our backyards and all of us will have to really live with the longstanding repercussions of this. We’re not talking about the crowding, the over-crowding in the schools we’re living with; the traffic issues that we’ve tried to deal with, with the traffic manager who has been very helpful to us…”
“We just hope you take into consideration our concerns and demand that KB does a new EIR for us all.”
