ACME Runkle Canyon Comments

We had reported on the Runkle Canyon TCE detects in the January 17, 2008 Ventura County Reporter article “Down the Test Tubes.” The Reporter and EnviroReporter.com obtained a December 2007 study of offsite pollution around SSFL prepared by an Arcadia-based environmental engineering firm MWH for Boeing, NASA and the Department of Energy which shows that TCE has been detected in approximately 10 percent of several dozen groundwater samples collected on Runkle Canyon property.

Bowling brought this up at a November 17, 2008 special meeting of the Simi Valley City Council that we wrote about in “Simi Valley supports Supplemental EIR for Runkle Canyon.” He noted that Boeing and NASA had turned off their groundwater remediation systems in 2000.

Those systems removed approximately 10 gallons of TCE a year through the use of “air-stripping” towers where the contaminated water cascades over charcoal-based filters and allowed to evaporate into the air.

The ambient amount of TCE in Los Angeles air is measureable. “Some cities, notably Los Angeles, have high ambient levels of TCE in the air,” reported a March 20, 2006 Los Angeles Times article.

Between 530,000 and 800,000 gallons of TCE remains in Rocketdyne’s groundwater from decades of rocket testing. It could take up to 80,000 years to remove it (in that rather dubious evaporative fashion) if the system was turned on.

At the city council meeting Bowling described a windmill in highlands of Runkle Canyon that had the TCE detects. It is situated close to Runkle’s border with the lab in the Simi Hills. Bowling added “This windmill well could potentially draw the contamination offsite.”

It was notable that councilmember Glen Becerra, usually skeptical of past environmental claims about Runkle Canyon, responded:

“Mr Mayor, maybe we could ask staff, I don’t know where the windmill is, I’m sure they could let us know; why couldn’t we ask staff to contact KB and ask them to turn it off. You could disconnect the pump from the windmill itself so it’s not pumping any water unless they are using it up there and I highly doubt they are using it up there so.”

“We could do it,” responded Simi Valley Mayor Miller. “We’ll have staff check it out.”

This was the last time Bowling or EnviroReporter.com heard about anything having to do with the windmill well on Runkle Canyon property where trichloroethylene has been detected.

And that was the last time the city seemed publicly concerned about contamination in the canyon that KB Home purchased for $38 million in 2006 hoping to build 461 at the top of the real estate boom now gone bust.

Bowling noted this in observations:

During the January Public meeting that you held in the Simi Valley City Council Chambers, why were there no City Officials nor the owner/developer or even the firm who did the testing (Dade-Moeller) in attendance? It was not even posted on the Simi Valley City Website until just a few days prior. This looks to be a low profile issue for the City of Simi Valley or at least they are treating it like one. All who attended saw the data and the efforts of Dade-Moeller to downplay the seriousness of their findings. RADIOLOGICAL FINDINGS!!!

Bowling is the president of the Malibu Association of Realtors and saved some of his harshest criticisms for KB Home at the end of his comments:

Look to Acknowledging KB Homes’ past (i.e. building a housing development on a former WWII bombing range in Texas without removing the bombs, wherein dozens of them – unexploded – were found in yards after families moved into the houses), let us ask ourselves what KB Homes may gain by the determination that Runkle Canyon – a piece of land bordering a former nuclear and rocket engine testing facility with the distinction of being home to the worst nuclear accident in U.S. history THE SRE – is safe to build homes on. KB Homes carries no insurance. They are self-insured and get around everything by forming sub-Corporations for each development and then closing down the Corporation once the project is completed. They have pushed their way through developing brownfields all over the United States.

Here we have a link to a government website that states KB Homes is in violation of the Clean Water Act and is in A Civil Action with the United States Government.

http://edocket.access.gpo.gov/2008/pdf/E8-14099.pdf

Look at these practices and look at the flawed data. This site needs a careful eye placed upon it and it needs to be tested right and right now.

Next “Railroading Runkle Canyon?” blog post: The Aerospace Runkle Canyon Comments

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