Search Results for 'rocketdyne'
City of LA to Feds – Clean up SSFL
The Los Angeles City Council votes unanimously to demand that NASA clean its polluted 450 acres at the Santa Susana Laboratory to background levels of radiation and chemical contamination. The victory comes courtesy of Councilmen Mitch Englander and Dennis Zine, two Republicans who aren’t fooled by NASA’s crafty maneuvering and Boeing’s meltdown makeover. Activists in city hall rejoice in victory which could save Los Angeles River from decades more pollution sluicing off the former Rocketdyne lab, site of three partial meltdowns and astronomical radiological and chemical contamination.
VCReporter’s “Greenwashing” Rocketdyne
Secret plan exposed after secret document posted online
By Michael Collins
Ventura County Reporter January 17, 2013
Aerospace giant Boeing plans to declare the former Rocketdyne site in the Simi Hills clean enough for public open space, even with recent findings of high radiation in the soil and continued chemical releases headed toward the Los Angeles River.
A [...]
EnviroReporter’s 2012 Year in Review
2012 was a banner year for EnviroReporter.com’s in-depth investigations of Fukushima, Rocketdyne, Runkle Canyon, fracking, perchlorate and a host of controversial environmental issues. New Media technology helped propel site’s coverage to new levels of investigative journalism excellence as scandal after scandal are exposed by the multi-award winning news website.
EPA Radiation Report meeting 12-12-12
Faced with a community incensed by EPA chucking out its own background standards, the EPA held its own meeting December 12 at the Grande Vista in Simi Valley. This time DTSC tagged along with the federal agency. Television crews swarmed the hotel lobby looking for concerned folks to interview. They found no shortage of community [...]
ROCKETDYNELAND
ROCKETDYNELAND
A galaxy of goo doesn’t seem to bother the people and groups who would like to make use of the sprawling Santa Susana Field Laboratory for their purposes, political and personal.
Implicit in the retooling of Rocketdyne “to shift discussions from a site with a sordid past to one with potential,” as the Polakovic plan puts [...]
Up a River Without a Cleanup
The federal EPA and the state’s DTSC abandon the agreement to cleanup SSFL to background levels of contamination. Longtime activists are outraged at repeated public betrayals as the government blows $41.5 million in stimulus money in the process. Boeing’s lobbying power, and its success in turning DTSC into a ‘captured agency’ virtually assures that contamination will continue to gush into the L.A. River, the object of a $2 billion renovation around which L.A.’s master plan is based. December 12 EPA meeting hears calls for investigation of the agency’s misappropriation of millions that were supposed to be the guide for the DTSC cleanup to background. Boeing’s PR flack, and author of its meltdown makeover, Gary Polakovic, shows up at the meeting unchastened and is warmly greeted by astroturf activist John Luker.
Toxic Department
Boeing’s huge lobbying war chest, one of the five highest corporate lobbyist coffers in the country, has turned Cal-EPA’s Department of Toxic Substances Control into a “captured agency” say Rocketdyne activists. Community members say DTSC appeared to fold in a lawsuit brought by Boeing over Santa Susana Field Laboratory, not challenging false statements in litigation. Encouraged by this backpedaling, another SSFL polluter, NASA, tries to back out of cleanup agreement which is greeted with citizen outrage. Boeing plans to leave lethal strontium-90 in its dirt at 430 to 43,000 times background where its astroturf collaborators claim no more cleanup is needed. The amounts of carcinogens that could be left behind will be staggering if Boeing succeeds in selling SSFL as “no significant risk to human health today” as Gary Polakovic’s plan puts it.
Operation Astroturf
Boeing greenwashes the polluted Rocketdyne site above the San Fernando Valley by pushing for and offering to fund an “astroturf” Community Advisory Group (CAG) and, with the help of the Department of Toxic Substances Control, eliminates the long-established SSFL Interagency Work Group. E-mails and interviews detail how Boeing and DTSC put all their support in the CAG petitioner, Christina Walsh, who has threatened, harassed and libeled community members, elected officials and the media. With other astroturf targets like open-space advocate John Luker, friend to Boeing meltdown makeover PR flack Gary Polakovic, the greenwashing of Rocketdyne is nearly complete.
Dirty Deeds
Rocketdyne’s litany of environmental accidents, spills, meltdowns and disasters has been no impediment to lab owner Boeing’s campaign of self-congratulations over its “open space vision.” EnviroReporter.com obtains exclusive footage of sloppy Boeing demolition work sending clouds of dusty goo into the San Fernando Valley. Intense radiological and chemical contamination carry very real consequences as studies on workers show and tragic stories of sick former employees and community members attest.
Rad News Digest II
TeamEnviroReporter debuts Rad News Digest II with new top-down article aggregation of the best stories on radiation-related news anywhere. Rad News Digest I, spanning from March 11, 2011, the day the triple Fukushima meltdowns began and ran through December 1, 2012. has documented thousands of the most important and compelling articles, reports, photographs, videos and podcasts on radiation in the news. Now both Rad News Digest I & II are here together. Hot News. Real Hot News.
Greenwashing Rocketdyne
Boeing’s meltdown makeover begins with a media campaign aimed to convince the press and public that the polluted Santa Susana Field Laboratory is clean enough right now for a park. To wipe away memories of decades of meltdowns, chemical and radiation dumping, spilling and burning, a former Los Angeles Times reporter, Gary Polakovic, crafts a plan to sell the “a site with a sordid past to one with potential.” Only problem: the secret plan to snow Southern California media and movers and shakers that Rocketdyne is clean is now revealed by EnviroReporter.com and the Los Angeles Daily News.
Boeing’s Meltdown Makeover
EnviroReporter.com exposes Boeing’s meltdown makeover in this five-part expose. Boeing hires a former LA Times writer, Gary Polakovic, to craft a plan selling the contaminated Santa Susana Field Laboratory as clean enough for a park. Thousands of pages of documents, reports, interviews, e-mails, photographs and surveillance video of demolition at the site reveal a vast Boeing meltdown makeover. New information shows the lab more radioactive than ever with a polluter-pliant government subverting its own $41.5 million radiation study.
2012 SSFL FoLAR photos
The highly contaminated Alpha rocket test stands are the headwaters of the Los Angeles River beginning in eastern Ventura County. Friends of the Los Angeles River, FoLAR, has fought since 1985 to “protect and restore the natural and historic heritage of the Los Angeles River and its riparian habitat through inclusive planning, education and wise [...]
A Keen Observer
Internet forums are strange places – virtual clubs where unseen individuals share information and opinions freely, passionately, and quite often, anonymously. Some give their real names and identifiers, others use nicknames or handles.
Anonymity on the internet can serve an important purpose – for example, victims of domestic violence in an online support group, individuals [...]
A Trail of Flames
For decades, the Santa Susana Field Laboratory (SSFL) activist community was relatively harmonious. Longtime members welcomed new activists, and the new activists were respectful toward them.
Over the past few years, however, a handful of activists became increasingly competitive, disruptive, and volatile. Inappropriate behind the scenes behavior spilled into public meetings, along with threats of [...]
AEG’s Perchlorate Problem
AEG’s Farmers Field $1.2 billion project gets the go-ahead from the Los Angeles Planning Commission despite plan’s environmental impact report leaving out crucial data about the use of the toxic oxidizer perchlorate in fireworks the facility will be able to shoot off every day of the year when it opens, perhaps in 2017. Activists are concerned over health effects while Los Angeles Times takes project boosterism to new and unseemly lows. EIR obscured by toxic smoke may open up city and developer to future lawsuits from fans, players, employees and people living around Farmers Field and impacted by perchlorate and heavy metals in the bursts.
RADIOACTIVE NIGHTMARE
Government turns a blind eye as fallout from Fukushima heads our way
By Michael Collins
Pasadena Weekly – July 5, 2012
Millions of Southern Californians and tourists seek the region’s famous beaches to cool off in the sea breeze and frolic in the surf. Those iconic breezes, however, may be delivering something hotter than the white sands along [...]
Fracked
While activists march on Sacramento with demands to “Stop Fracking with California,” and historic chemical legislation comes to the United States Senate floor, EnviroReporter.com‘s Michael Collins takes on Fracking Chemical Cocktail and Trichloroethylene in The Toxies Tapes. More brawl than interview, TCE clobbers Collins who defiantly jousts with the volatile organic compound. The reporter then truly meets his match in “Frackie” where the chemistry sparks and the subject turns to drilling and fracking.
Runkle Canyon Fraud and Folly
KB Home rolls out the big guns at the Simi Valley Planning Commission meeting deciding whether the developer gets a five-year extension on its permit to build in Runkle Canyon. An extension, however, may be exactly what the activists need because it won’t force KB Home’s hand with two years left on its present permit.
EnviroReporter Best 2011 Online News Organization Website at 2012 LA Press Club Gala
EnviroReporter.com wins First Place for “Website – News Organization – Exclusive to the Internet” at the 54th Annual Southern California Journalism Awards Gala Dinner was held at the Biltmore Hotel in downtown Los Angeles June 24, 2012. The win for the website is a strong affirmation that our coverage of the ongoing Fukushima meltdowns is valued by alternative and mainstream media. The team of Denise Anne Duffield and Michael Collins, who serve as editor and reporter respectively for the website, also placed in the competition for Online Journalist of the Year and Online Investigative series also for their radiation contamination in North America work.
A RADIOACTIVE NIGHTMARE
As fallout from FukushiFma heads our way, the government turns a blind eye
By Michael Collins
Ventura County Reporter – June 7, 2012
Millions of Southern Californians and tourists seek the region’s famous beaches to cool off in the sea breeze and frolic in the surf. Those iconic breezes, however, may be delivering something hotter than the white [...]
Runkle Canyon Tanks
For the first time in seven years of residents battling KB Home’s massive Runkle Canyon development in the shadow of the old Rocketdyne lab over pollution problems in the canyon, company representatives and the community face off at a Simi Valley Planning Commission meeting over a five-year option to build permit extension. The fur flies as the developer’s representative and his attorney, perhaps flustered by the vocal opposition to the project, proceed to embark on an odyssey of ‘factual inaccuracies’ about the controversial building scheme.
Runkle Roulette
KB Home goes for a five year extension on a construction permit to build 461 residences in Runkle Canyon. Problem is that new contamination has been found on the site and evidence that the developer has blocked government requests for Clean Water Act data.
SSFL Poster Session Simi Valley May 17, 2012
After abruptly suspending the SSFL Work Group, the Department of Toxic Substances Control held this gathering attended by a handful of people. There are advantages to poster board meetings like this: they sometime yield valuable information. In this case, evidence of extremely high alpha radiation two miles offsite in a well situated in the heart [...]
L.A. Air Even Hotter with Radiation
Topping EnviroReporter.com‘s last radiation readings of HEPA filter dust in the western Los Angeles Basin, a 40-day accumulation of dust and debris by three HEPA filter machines at Radiation Station Santa Monica yields the highest air rad readings we’ve taken yet: 7.46 times normal. The California Highway Patrol considers anything 3 times normal radiologically to be a hazmat situation making this detection doubly dangerous.
