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Real Hot Property
A popular Brentwood dog park on Veterans
Administration property is build over an old
radioactive waste dump that may soon be unearthed
by proposed development.
SUVs and luxury sedans glide into the Barrington Dog
Park parking lot just south of Sunset Boulevard in
Brentwood. Industry types and soccer moms chatter
away on cell phones as they pop out of their vehicles
with their canine charges. Beagles and boxers bound
onto the pavement ready to romp with regulars like
Australian Shepherd dogs named Mick Jagger and
Bella and pugs called Lola, Daphne and Spanky.
The park is popular with Brentwood resident Dustin
Hoffman and other celebrities including Kirstin Dunst
and Owen Wilson. The Brentwood Dog Park hosts an
annual “Bow wow ween” in October, officiated by
“NoTORIous” television star and head dog contest judge
A popular Brentwood dog park on Veterans
Administration property is build over an old
radioactive waste dump that may soon be unearthed
by proposed development.
SUVs and luxury sedans glide into the Barrington Dog
Park parking lot just south of Sunset Boulevard in
Brentwood. Industry types and soccer moms chatter
away on cell phones as they pop out of their vehicles
with their canine charges. Beagles and boxers bound
onto the pavement ready to romp with regulars like
Australian Shepherd dogs named Mick Jagger and
Bella and pugs called Lola, Daphne and Spanky.
The park is popular with Brentwood resident Dustin
Hoffman and other celebrities including Kirstin Dunst
and Owen Wilson. The Brentwood Dog Park hosts an
annual “Bow wow ween” in October, officiated by
“NoTORIous” television star and head dog contest judge
From Hare to Eternity -- Irradiated animals are buried in Brentwood's
forgotten nuke dump.
forgotten nuke dump.
Tori Spelling whose seven-year-old pug is named Mimi La Rue. The 2004 show
attracted 1,500 canine and feline lovers and held a silent auction with items donated by
George Clooney,Courtney Thorne-Smith and James Gandolfino. Bow wow ween
featured a mobile microchip clinic, dog masseuse, a canine costume contest and even
a cat cemetery with mock tombstones.
The dog park’s Halloween festivities might not be too scary, but what lurks beneath its
soil is downright frightening. Unbeknownst to pet owners, the off-leash park is partially
situated over an old nuclear and chemical dump. From 1952 to 1968, UCLA and the
West LA Veterans Administration, now called the Veterans Affairs West Los Angeles
Healthcare Center, used the land adjacent and under the park to get rid of radioactive
biomedical research waste on the northwest reaches of the VA.
Now this forgotten radioactive waste, hazardous for thousands of years, has come back
to haunt the VA which is looking at options to develop the land ostensibly to help the
cash-strapped department. In the process PricewaterhouseCoopers, the VA’s
contractor on the project, has reported that the nuke dump is even larger than
previously known and is under the athletic fields of the VA-adjacent Brentwood School.
Faced with questions about these hottest revelations, the VA has falsely portrayed the
dump as harmless, employing bad science and obfuscation to hide the dregs of years
of oft-time bizarre and cruel animal and human radiation experimentation conducted by
the VA and UCLA for decades in the last century.
The VA and UCLA were part of America’s Cold War massive enterprise to understand
the biological effects of radiation on humans and animals. These efforts produced
radiation waste that was disposed of as easily as burying, say, a dead animal.
Carcasses of radioactive lab dogs, cats and a menagerie of animals make up around
half of the toxic trash deep-sixed in the dirt off of Barrington Avenue. The dumping was
done before regulations were created to carefully control the insidious threat that
unencumbered rad waste disposal poses.
Barrels full of radioactive tritium, carbon-14 and at least thirteen other isotopes, along
with contaminated biomedical lab waste, were also tossed or poured into this dump in
trenches and holes with nary a record of the dumping for the first eight years of
operation. One prevalent radionuclide in the dump is carbon-14 with a half-life of 5,730
years. The location was also used as a chemical waste disposal site for the VA and
UCLA.
attracted 1,500 canine and feline lovers and held a silent auction with items donated by
George Clooney,Courtney Thorne-Smith and James Gandolfino. Bow wow ween
featured a mobile microchip clinic, dog masseuse, a canine costume contest and even
a cat cemetery with mock tombstones.
The dog park’s Halloween festivities might not be too scary, but what lurks beneath its
soil is downright frightening. Unbeknownst to pet owners, the off-leash park is partially
situated over an old nuclear and chemical dump. From 1952 to 1968, UCLA and the
West LA Veterans Administration, now called the Veterans Affairs West Los Angeles
Healthcare Center, used the land adjacent and under the park to get rid of radioactive
biomedical research waste on the northwest reaches of the VA.
Now this forgotten radioactive waste, hazardous for thousands of years, has come back
to haunt the VA which is looking at options to develop the land ostensibly to help the
cash-strapped department. In the process PricewaterhouseCoopers, the VA’s
contractor on the project, has reported that the nuke dump is even larger than
previously known and is under the athletic fields of the VA-adjacent Brentwood School.
Faced with questions about these hottest revelations, the VA has falsely portrayed the
dump as harmless, employing bad science and obfuscation to hide the dregs of years
of oft-time bizarre and cruel animal and human radiation experimentation conducted by
the VA and UCLA for decades in the last century.
The VA and UCLA were part of America’s Cold War massive enterprise to understand
the biological effects of radiation on humans and animals. These efforts produced
radiation waste that was disposed of as easily as burying, say, a dead animal.
Carcasses of radioactive lab dogs, cats and a menagerie of animals make up around
half of the toxic trash deep-sixed in the dirt off of Barrington Avenue. The dumping was
done before regulations were created to carefully control the insidious threat that
unencumbered rad waste disposal poses.
Barrels full of radioactive tritium, carbon-14 and at least thirteen other isotopes, along
with contaminated biomedical lab waste, were also tossed or poured into this dump in
trenches and holes with nary a record of the dumping for the first eight years of
operation. One prevalent radionuclide in the dump is carbon-14 with a half-life of 5,730
years. The location was also used as a chemical waste disposal site for the VA and
UCLA.
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| Welcome to EnviroReporter.com! |
Investigative journalist
Michael Collins debuts this
website with a comprehensive
investigation of a nuclear dump in
Brentwood, California. This is a
longer version of the cover story
currently in LA CityBeat. Check
the paper and this website for
updates!
Michael Collins debuts this
website with a comprehensive
investigation of a nuclear dump in
Brentwood, California. This is a
longer version of the cover story
currently in LA CityBeat. Check
the paper and this website for
updates!
