REAL HOT PROPERTY
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The dog park is not without its share of drama. In August 2004, a Papillion was killed by a Labrador-pit bull mix. In memoriam, FOBDP arranged to get a special French street sign from T-shirt sales that read, “Parc Choupette, est. 2005,” named after the little dead dog. It was installed for the official dedication of the small dog park. Actor Jim Belushi got kicked out of the off-leash facility after his bringing his two aggressive German Shepherds, according to dog park committee officer Annie Lever, who is known as “America’s most celebrated dog walker” and makes $150,000 annually. “Belushi thought that it was funny when his dogs were herding other dogs,” said Lever. “We didn’t.”
“People usually come here and try to just keep low profile and be normal,” said FOBDP founder Sue Black. “And they are usually so successful at that, most of the time you don’t recognize them. I actually spoke with Brooke Shields once a while back and she was so open and natural and normal that even though she obviously looked like her, I pretty much didn’t get who she was until I overheard someone else mention it. And that’s what’s so nice about it. Dogs tend to be a great equalizer. Everyone here picks up their own poop, not to put too fine a point on it.”
The dog park sits on a bluff overlooking a ravine where the dump sprawls eastward. Across this gully is a huge VA athletic field used by the teams from the Coast Soccer League including the Galaxy Fusion and the Westside Breakers. “The Westside Breakers has quickly become the premier girls soccer club on the Westside area of Los Angeles,” proclaims the group’s website. Rule number one for playing at the VA field is quite clear. “STAY within the field area. DO NOT let children play on the hills or stray into or into brushy areas.”
One calm spring day, a reporter watched the Breakers at practice; playing soccer and running drills with hundreds of other kids. A warning sign was posted by the gap in the gated fence separating the soccer field and the known nuke dump. The sign, actually a piece of paper in a plastic sheet protector, said that only authorized personnel were allowed and that no trespassing or excavating was permissible. “THIS IS A CLOSED SITE.” When asked if the kids ever went into the ravine, one parent watching practice said “All the time. They kick the balls over that fence.”
Things were not always so serene and worry-free for the area. When the Committee to Bridge the Gap became aware that the late Los Angeles City Councilman Marvin Braude and ex-local Congressman Anthony Beilenson’s were in negotiations with the VA for a park over the rumored nuke dump, beginning in August 1979, it began extensive research on the site. The nuclear watchdog group subsequently issued a press release in March 1981 that pointed out some of the main radionuclides known to be at the dump, including tritium and carbon-14, even though “it is hard to know until there is coring done at the site, the environmental group said.”
Coring still remains the only way to find out what is in the site, as the VA only had a crude map of three areas of where they poured and buried their toxic garbage for the sixteen years of operation. Coring, simply put, is the process of drilling deep into the earth with a hollow tube and extracting an undisturbed sample of the intact layers beneath the surface. “Radioactive waste was disposed of by burial without knowledge as to the amount, depth, or spacing of burials,” noted a May 12, 1960 AEC compliance report noting noncompliance with regulations. “No records of radiation disposal were maintained.”
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