BRENTWOOD’S TOXIC GRAVE
Historic dumping grounds beneath the spectacular VA land finally get tested.
LA Weekly – December 10, 2009
Several days ago, men wearing radiation dosimeters stood on the Veteran Administration’s West Los Angeles property, atop an old toxic dump that partially underlies Barrington Recreation Center’s baseball fields and a city dog park, and began the federal government’s long-delayed $1 million test of the soils.
The men would not identify themselves but one volunteered that they planned to “core” tubes of dirt to test for contamination along the length of a fenced-off drainage system east of the park.
Yet they were drilling in an area covered with 5,000 truckloads of inert fill dirt, according to a VA report. And they were coring far from key areas that the VA’s own maps show overlay the disused VA and UCLA medical and chemical dumps, long hidden beneath the VA’s chunk of valuable Westside real estate.
According to VA maps, two historic dumping areas lie partially under the city’s Barrington Recreation Center, a popular spot that draws affluent Brentwood residents, including celebrities. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has played ball with his boys there.
Yet after years of promises to complete tests and determine what is really buried there, indications show that the property has not been well monitored. A disturbing collection of abandoned soldiers’ tombstones, partially covered by the eroding dirt and debris, have sat for months within the boundaries of the dump study area, in violation of federal regulations requiring dignified, full destruction of such discarded gravestones.
Some of the white marble slabs are whole, others broken. “Rodriguez” died in 1971 after serving in World War II in the Army. His headstone, busted in half and with his first name missing, is one of at least 10 apparently long-ago discarded markers spotted peeking from the dirt since this reporter first noticed them on January 9, 2008.
That day, California Sen. Dianne Feinstein spoke at the VA, where she was honored for legislation preventing commercial development of the Brentwood-adjacent property, one of the choicest pieces of open land in urban Los Angeles. When a reporter told Feinstein about the broken tombstones partially buried in dirt, she responded, “Really?” then turned to her district director, Trevor Daley, and said, “Yes, go out and look at it, will you?” The existence of the grave markers implies that the VA’s chief of external affairs, Ralph Tillman, has not completed an assessment of soils in the study area — to the point of failing to undertake the basic task of properly destroying the gravestones.
