NUKE ‘EM HIGH
Unearthing the VA dump’s dirty secrets raises more questions than answers
By Michael Collins
Los Angeles CityBeat — August 16, 2007
On August 8, after months of wrangling, Congressman Henry Waxman finally released nearly 6,000 pages of Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) documents related to the Brentwood nuclear and chemical dump. The L.A. Democrat has had the documents since mid-December, having obtained them after sending a letter to now-outgoing VA Secretary Jim Nicholson on March 27, 2006, demanding information, in part, about the dump. “Has the public been informed that contaminates are buried under or near the location of the Brentwood School athletic facility?” wrote Waxman. “Whose decision was it to leave the non-excavated radioactive medical waste in place?”
The waste disposal site was used during the Cold War to bury radioactive animal carcasses and biomedical research trash contaminated with radioisotopes, including tritium and carbon-14, in unlined trenches and barrels. These materials are under what is now the Barrington dog park, an adjacent asbestos-contaminated junk-strewn arroyo, and the athletic fields of private Brentwood School, which leases 20 acres from the VA for its $2.5 million sports complex.
As CityBeat first reported (“Real Hot Property,” May 18, 2006), a September 2005 draft report by VA subcontractor PricewaterhouseCoopers revealed that radioactive and asbestos-containing material was buried under 15 to 30 feet of fill at the Brentwood School’s athletic fields. It was a revelation Nicholson was eager to dismiss last year. “I wish to bring to your specific attention information contained in this material related to your requests #13 through #16 concerning environmental issues, and in particular, any possible radioactive medical wastes beneath or near the location of the Brentwood School’s athletic fields,” Nicholson wrote Waxman on December 12. “VA’s response clearly identifies a number of independent consultants and Federal and state reports that reviewed this issue. The conclusion of all of these reports is that there were no radioactive materials on the site.”
However, many of these 5,539 pages of documents not only contradict Nicholson’s claims but also show that the dump operated four years longer than CityBeat originally reported – starting in 1948 and ending October 28, 1968 – and was larger than first reported, stretching down the arroyo behind Brentwood Theatre. According to a former VA worker’s recount a quarter-century ago, burials took place “near the fence,” along Barrington Avenue, which could be under or adjacent to the present-day dog park and parking lot in areas previously unknown as disposal sites.
An October 2000 report by Walnut Creek-based Locus Technologies for the VA – which assessed the grading, development, and construction of the Brentwood School sports facilities – showed how tractors plowing the site uncovered several extensive ash pits buried about two feet underground. “Buried apparent medical incinerator ash was discovered during excavation activities at the upper bench area,” the report noted. “Approximately 780 cubic yards of apparent medical incinerator ash were visually screened, segregated and stockpiled on plastic sheets (visqueen) outside the Project area at the south end of the arroyo.”
The West L.A. VA cremated irradiated lab animals and simply buried the ashes like it had the other nuclear waste. In 1960, an Atomic Energy Commission directive ordered the facility to stop incinerating carcasses contaminated with carbon-14. “This means that at this Center no C-14 will be disposed of by incineration without permission from the AEC, in writing.”
The VA’s partner in animal and human radiation experimentation was UCLA, as CityBeat has reported (“Where the Bodies Are Buried,” May 25, 2006). The university also used the VA dump for biomedical rad-waste disposal and may have been the source of these extensive ash pits, although an official told CityBeat that UCLA has no records from the era. Records do exist, however, and show that UCLA incinerated radioactive animals and lab waste from 1954 to 1994 in a “Burn-All” crematorium on campus that had no air filters and was used to reduce to ashes even the deadliest radioactive waste, including “mixed fission products,” such as what would come out of a reactor core.
The Locus report also includes photographs of the Brentwood School’s excavations showing these unearthed ash pits and hundreds of spent hypodermic needles, many recovered from two metal trash cans filled with syringes and melted Petri dishes. “This assessment identified potential impacts to the human environment from several sources,” the report said, among them “medical waste including low-level radioactive materials … . Solid wastes and medical wastes have been covered by fill material to depths of twenty to thirty feet or more.
