ACME Runkle Canyon Comments
Michael Collins | Aug 27, 2009 | Comments 0
Bill Bowling in front of ACME.
Events last week, including the replacement of Norm Riley as DTSC project manager for Rocketdyne and Runkle Canyon, has necessitated extending the series into this week. We covered those pivotal events in “Coup de Goo.” Further insight into the not-so-smooth state of affairs regarding the Rocketdyne cleanup was explored in our subsequent “Double Vision” post.
From last week:
This week we will look at the Runkle Canyon comments of Aerospace Cancer Museum of Education’s Bill Bowling, The Aerospace.Org’s D’Lanie Blaze and, of course, EnviroReporter.com’s extensive analysis. Then we’ll sum it all up for you.
Why are we doing this? Because we broke the story of radiological and chemical pollution problems in Runkle Canyon with our cover 2005 stories “Neighborhood Threat” in Los Angeles CityBeat and “Which Way the Wind Blows” in the Ventura County Reporter.
Since that time, all manner of community and government reaction has taken place as our Runkle Canyon investigation bears out. This has included reporting on the formation of a citizens group who call themselves the Radiation Rangers.
The Rangers operate StopRunkledyne.com and have helped stall the massive KB Home development perhaps until such time that the land is adequately characterized and cleaned up to the extent that it won’t pose any possible threat to potential future residents or neighbors who access the open space there. And since that time, the Rangers say they have seen government obfuscation, developer cover-ups and incompetence, slights-of-hand and questionable commitment to clean up.
While personally finding Riley a likeable enough gentleman, the Rangers were baffled by his decisions. They eventually came to the conclusion that not only did the DTSC project manager for Runkle Canyon not take their comments seriously, that he was inexplicably not looking at some serious science indicating that the canyon is polluted by strontium-90, chemicals and heavy metals.
Many Rocketdyne activists supported DTSC’s Norm Riley, even demanding his reinstatement as head of the Runkle Canyon and SSFL cleanups. An August 26 emergency meeting at the Aerospace Cancer Museum of Education was attended by Christina Walsh, Bill Bowling, Sue Boecker, Mary Weisbrock, Margery Brown, Bonnie Klea and, apparently, Dan Hirsch.
The meeting’s participants were apparently not aware of our “Double Vision” post that laid out exactly what Riley had said about SB-990 and the cleanup of the Santa Susana Field Laboratory. The news was greeted by an uncharacteristic silence among the meeting’s participants.
Regardless, Rocketdyne activists are concerned about what happens on The Hill and in its surrounding environs such as Runkle Canyon.
Such was the case with ACME’s founder and director, Bill Bowling, who submitted three pages of “Comments to the Runkle Canyon Response Plan” to DTSC on February 13, 2009. Bowling began:
I first would like to point out that the December 2007 Offsite Data Report of the Santa Susana Field Laboratory (SSFL) prepared by MWH needs to be corrected and reprinted and the copies at all the libraries be replace as it states on page 18 that the Runkle Canyon Property does not share a border with the SSFL. This is FALSE and the public who read about the issues of the SSFL need to be properly informed otherwise it may mean nothing to them if they feel it is not in close proximity to the SSFL.
We addressed this issue in the July 22, 2009 LA Weekly article “Wrinkles in Runkle Canyon – 50 Years After a Santa Susana Nuclear Accident Holds Up Land Development,” and in the EnviroReporter.com post “Meltdown Dustup.” Boeing subsequently replied that they had indeed erred and would correct the report. We added their reply to the Meltdown Dustup post.
Bowling continued in his Response Plan comments:
It is not just the AREA IV portion of the SSFL that has impacted Runkle. We must toss aside the rejected Conceptual Groundwater Model and look to the Runkle Canyon Windmill Well and it’s (sic) High Concentrations of Trichloroethylene (TCE) as noted in prior reports. This windmill is pumping every time the wind blows, sometimes non-stop, pulling in contaminated groundwater. This windmill needs to be dismantled to allow the TCE concentrations to stay within the SSFL boundaries.
Filed Under: Blog • Runkle Canyon
