Nuclear Biomedical Waste Buried in Brentwood
Publish date: December 19, 2007
Last updated: December 21, 2007
Reporter’s NOTES – Hena Cuevas
I first interviewed environmental reporter Michael Collins in late 2006 about his reports on contamination at Runkle Canyon in Simi Valley, Calif. Back then, he mentioned something that peaked my interest. He told me that he was looking into an old nuclear dump site in Brentwood, Calif. Since this is one of the most exclusive areas in Los Angeles, I wanted to learn more about it.
It would take over a year for us to eventually do the story. And as it turns out, it became the last one I would do for Life & Times before the show goes off the air.
It isn’t an easy one to tell—environmental and contamination stories rarely are—but Life & Times was one of the few TV shows on the air that offered the time to go in-depth into these issues.
Life & Times Transcript 12/19/07
Val Zavala>> Tonight on Life and Times –
Dogs play there, children go to school there, but what’s underneath this park in Brentwood?
Michael Collins>> I think what we at EnviroReporter.com brought to the table, we’re able to push this story along so the community would have to face that there is a nuclear dump in Brentwood.
Val Zavala>> And then, you could call it buried treasure. The hundreds of artworks in the stations of the Los Angeles subway.
It’s all straight ahead on tonight’s Life and Times.
Announcer>> Life and Times is made possible through the generous support of the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of medicine, health, science and education.
And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg.
Val Zavala>> Our story today takes us to the Veterans Administration, the large facility we’re all familiar with in Brentwood. The issue? Biomedical nuclear waste that was buried here more than fifty years ago. Hypodermic needles and even the cremated remains of radioactive lab animals. How dangerous is it? That’s the question Hena Cuevas set out to answer.
Hena Cuevas>> Barrington Park is one of the best places in Brentwood for dogs to run free. It’s nice and peaceful above ground, but there are questions about what’s buried deep under the grass and mulch. For twenty years, this area was used as a dumping ground for radioactive waste.
Michael Collins>> There were experiments on animals, humans, and I looked at what they did and that way I could find out for sure what it was that went into this dump.
Hena Cuevas>> Michael Collins is a freelance environmental reporter. He first heard about the dump six years ago when an environmental group brought it to his attention.
Michael Collins>> They had tried a quarter century ago to bring the facts of the matter to the public’s attention and did. Unfortunately, for them, they failed to convince government leaders and the community enough that there was enough of a danger to have the area properly characterized before the building of the park that we’re at now.
Hena Cuevas>> So Collins decided to look into it. He found that, from 1948 to 1968, the Department of Veterans Affairs, together with UCLA, conducted radiation experiments on animals and humans.
Michael Collins>> That if you were going to do experiments like that that were somewhat reckless, you might be a little reckless in your disposal of the wastes. Indeed, here I was able to discover that wastes were dumped in unlined trenches, different types of radioactive waste that shouldn’t be mixed together were mixed together.
Hena Cuevas>> The waste included hypodermic needles and the remains from cremated lab animals that had been radiated. Collins began a series of newspaper articles and posted most of the information on his website, EnviroReporter.com.
Michael Collins>> What we at EnviroReporter.com brought to the table was full evidence of what’s here, maps of what’s here, photographs of what’s here and, in conjunction with L.A. CityBeat, we were able to push this story along so the community would have to face that there is a nuclear dump in Brentwood.
