HOT PROPERTY – Annotated
The results of the 2005 sampling were obtained by ValleyBeat through a Public Records Act request. They show the readings from Dade Moeller and from the CDHS state lab in Richmond. The retested locations were all radically lower in Sr-90 than in the previous tests conducted by GreenPark Runkle. In one spot tested, the state lab’s results were 490 times lower for Sr-90 than when it was tested in a 1999 survey. Oddly, the CDHS results for Sr-90 were from two-to-19 times less than the exact same split samples analyzed by Dade Moeller.
In July 1995, the U.S. EPA estimated that the average local background concentration for Sr-90 in the Santa Susana hills area was 0.052 picocuries per gram (pCi/g) for soil, which is a measurement of the normal presence of the radionuclide. Documents supplied in December 2005 by CDHS suggest that the average background for Sr-90 in “Western Area” soil, which includes Runkle Canyon, is 0.030 pCi/g. Each one of Dade Moeller’s readings is above Sr-90′s natural background at Runkle Canyon and even though that lab’s reading for the previously known hottest spot on the property is lower by nearly 30 times, it is still over eight times the background and nearly twice the EPA’s preliminary remediation goal for Sr-90.
This would seem to indicate that the strontium-90 problem in Runkle Canyon soil hasn’t been retested away. And, even though CDHS has strikingly lower results than even Dade Moeller, let alone the comprehensive sampling done from 1998 through 2003, the agency still claims not to have made any determinations regarding the area’s safety, even if it told Boeing’s Rutherford otherwise.
“CDHS is still evaluating why the June 7, 2005 sampling results were significantly lower than previous results for the five sampled locations. No conclusion has been reached at this time,” said Brooks.
That hasn’t stopped the developer from claiming otherwise, either. Though GreenPark Runkle didn’t return ValleyBeat requests for comment, it had plenty to say to a concerned Simi Valley resident via e-mail. “As to your question regarding environmental concerns at the site, according to stringent EPA safety standards, we are well below what is safe for residential development, which are the highest level of environmental standards for any type of development,” wrote Marlo Naber, GreenPark Runkle’s project representative, to a Simi resident on December 6. “These findings are the result of exhaustive studies for specified organic and inorganic chemicals conducted on the property over the past few years.”
