REAL HOT PROPERTY – LA CITYBEAT
Eliciting true and accurate information about the CARES West L.A. VA conundrum may be made easier by a March 27 letter to VA Secretary Nicholson from the House of Representatives Committee on Government Reform. The letter, signed by the committee’s chairman, Rep. Tom Davis (R-VA), and Waxman, the ranking minority whip, requests the contract between the VA and PricewaterhouseCoopers and a whole slew of documents related to the CARES process at the West L.A. VA.
The letter also posed questions about who excavated the radioactive material from the Brentwood School athletic fields and where was it disposed.
The advent of the CARES initiative has community residents and activists taking another hard look at the VA’s disturbing record of radioactive dumping.
“Given this unsettling history, why would anyone in their right mind want to ignore this dump and believe anything the VA has to say about it?” says Ramberg. “When the Ahmanson Ranch development crashed in 2003 over concerns that neighboring Rocketdyne had polluted it with radiological and chemical contamination, the developer Washington Mutual had to walk away. It just doesn’t pay to develop ‘hot’ property. But it might pay to properly test the place to see how extensive the problem is.”
Next week: The animal and human radiation experiments at the VA and UCLA that helped fill the Brentwood nuclear dump.
Michael Collins is a frequent contributor to CityBeat. For comprehensive information, documents, and photographs on the Brentwood dump, see his website EnviroReporter.com.
