Runkle Rousing

EnviroReporter.com just posted four videos of concerned citizens protesting Runkle Canyon’s development. They are filmed by Brigham Maher, who also addresses the Simi Valley City Council, on October 22, 2007, which can also be seen via the city’s video archive of the meeting.

The videos provide insight into how some feel about Runkle Canyon being developed without a proper characterization and cleanup of the elevated amounts of strontium-90, arsenic, vanadium, chromium and benzo(a)anthracene found in the picturesque canyon. These people are awaiting responses to their comments on the proposed cleanup plan for Runkle Canyon.

As I reported in the July 31 post “The Gloves Come Off,” the Department of Toxic Substances Control is about to approve a Runkle Canyon cleanup response plan. Interestingly, the DTSC project manager for the KB Home/DTSC cleanup agreement, Norm Riley, said nothing about all the public comments he had received about the plan, including the Radiation Ranger response plan comments.

“With respect to the Runkle Canyon project, we have not yet approved the response plan that was submitted by the developer and the developer therefore was not able to proceed with removal of tar material and additional testing prescribed by DTSC until such time as the response plan is reviewed,” Riley said. “My hope is that we will be able to approve that response plan in the next few weeks but I don’t know exactly when it’ll happen.”

So what happened to the comments? Is DTSC going to green-light a response plan without the public seeing what it is? Or is Riley going to approve the response plan it did see that has raised so many concerns, generated numerous comments most available on StopRunkledyne.com, without even considering those comments in response to the public?

If that is the case, there is sure to be plenty of public reaction. If an October 22, 2007 meeting of the Simi Valley City Council is any indication, the citizenry has a lot to say about KB Home’s long-delayed development of 461 homes. I wrote about this meeting in a November 1, 2007 Ventura County Reporter cover story called “Dirty Business – New law cleaning up Rocketdyne for parkland may not stop adjacent KB Home development pushed by Simi Valley City Council.”

Following are selected excerpts of what different folks said, including the reactions of the mayor and city council. These same folks, and others, eagerly await DTSC’s responses to their comments on this controversial canyon and the cleanup response plan.

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.

“The Good Reverend John” Southwick, Radiation Ranger:

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.

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