Search Results for 'Michael Collins'
WATERED DOWN
National Academy of Science report rekindles hot debate over California’s perchlorate contamination
By Michael Collins
Los Angeles CityBeat/ValleyBeat – January 20, 2005
The January 10 release of a National Academy of Sciences report on the hazards of the rocket fuel oxidizer perchlorate has the defense and aerospace industry crowing while some environmentalists sing the blues. The report recommends [...]
UPPING THE ANTE
National Academy of Sciences report reignites debate on danger of perchlorate
By Michael Collins
Pasadena Weekly – January 20, 2005
The Jan. 10 release of the National Academy of Sciences report on the hazards of perchlorate recommends national drinking water standards be radically more lax than those that the Environmental Protection Agency currently strives for, reigniting the [...]
DUMB AND DUMBER
Protecting kids from perchlorate isn’t rocket science
By Michael Collins
Ventura County Reporter – January 20, 2005
On Jan. 10, the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) released a report on the hazards of perchlorate that has the defense and aerospace industry crowing and some environmentalists singing the blues.
The NAS report recommends national drinking water standards that would be [...]
DR. BENNETT RAMBERG – 3rd DEGREE INTERVIEW
This interview appeared in Los Angeles CityBeat June 15, 2006
The international dispute over Iran’s fledgling nuclear program has reached an impasse, and, shockingly, the Bush administration’s response has been more carrot than stick. Just a week ago, the U.S. offered Iran a package of economic and diplomatic incentives in the hopes that this would resolve [...]
THAT HEALTHY GLOW
Radiation? A health tonic! The history of L.A.’s radium rage
By Michael Collins
Los Angeles CityBeat/ValleyBeat — August 5, 2006
Once upon a time in the City of Angels, radioactive products made with lethal yet luminous radium became a health rage. Wondrous radium, which cost $1 million an ounce in the 1920s, was commonly prescribed by physicians to [...]
THE DIRT ON OUR DIRT
Roll up, roll up for the military toxicity tour
By Michael Collins
Los Angeles CityBeat/ValleyBeat – August 3, 2006
Southern California is seasonally inundated with tour buses plying the streets of Hollywood and the homes of entertainment stars. But a new tour, begun this summer, takes the curious to places far hotter and more significant: the Military Tour [...]
SMOKE ON THE WATER
Proposition 84 promises much-needed water cleanup in the San Fernando Valley, but is still struggling to get traction
By Michael Collins
Los Angeles CityBeat/ValleyBeat — November 2, 2006
When they go to the polls November 7, Angelenos will be paying special attention to Proposition 84, the biggest water bond ever floated in the state. Besides shoring up the [...]
FISHBACK MOUNTAIN
One man calls his project on the L.A./Ventura border the pursuit of a dream home, but others just see an illegal solid waste dump.
By Michael Collins
Los Angeles CityBeat/ValleyBeat – November 23, 2006
Chatsworth resident Todd Doherty began noticing a heavy flow of dump truck traffic heading up and down Woolsey Canyon in November 2004. The 10, [...]
ROCKETDYNE’S RED GLARE
By Michael Collins
LA Weekly – December 9, 1998
Pulling up to Simi Valley City Hall the morning of October 21, EPA staffer Vicky Semones was counting on a quiet, efficient work meeting. Her job was to coordinate the scientists, public officials and community representatives monitoring the cleanup from decades of nuclear and chemical experimentation at the [...]
TOTAL RECALL
By Michael Collins
LA Weekly – December 9,1998
“Start talking to the former employees — those who are left alive — that have not contracted cancer,” former Rocketdyne technician Dan Parks implored at the June 24 meeting of the Santa Susana Field Interagency Work Group. A lifelong resident of Simi Valley, Parks worked for Rocketdyne’s Radiation [...]
MELTDOWN MONEY
By Michael Collins
LA Weekly – December 23, 1998
Imagine giving someone millions of dollars for doing a bad job. That’s what Secretary of Energy Bill Richardson did on December 15 when he awarded aerospace giant Boeing $148.5 million to complete cleanup efforts at its Rocketdyne Santa Susana Field Laboratory by 2006.
Among the more creative reasons Department [...]
SUITED UP
By Michael Collins
LA Weekly – January 20, 1999
Accused industrial polluter Rocketdyne has ducked several legal bullets, but its problems aren’t over yet.
The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco last month green-lighted a federal class-action lawsuit against the corporation’s parent company, Boeing.
The suit charges Rocketdyne with leaks and releases of radioactive [...]
UCLA STUDY BURNS ROCKETDYNE
Cancer rates elevated among space-lab workers
By Michael Collins
LA Weekly – April 21, 1999
The other gooey shoe dropped last week in Simi Valley. UCLA’s School of Public Health released its long-term study of Rocketdyne employees exposed to a soup of toxic chemicals while working on the company’s giant rocket test-stands.
The results were grim: Increased rates of [...]
ROCKET MAN
William Webber’s memory of fire
By Michael Collins
LA Weekly – April 21, 1999
In conducting two detailed long-term health surveys of Rocketdyne employees, UCLA scientists have necessarily focused on the results of working for a firm that helped pioneer the space race.
William Webber offers a glimpse of how it all happened.
A rocket scientist who spent a total [...]
STATE STAINED IN ROCKETDYNE SCANDAL
Watchdog agency under fire for colluding with space firm
By Michael Collins
LA Weekly – May 5, 1999
The controversy over potential toxic contamination of workers and the community surrounding Rocketdyne’s Santa Susana Field Laboratory in Simi Valley is now threatening to engulf a state agency charged with monitoring inquiries into the aerospace giant.
Assembly Members Sheila Kuehl (D– [...]
BLAST FROM THE PAST
Criminal charges filed in fatal explosion
By Michael Collins
(LA Weekly – May 5, 1999)
On July 26, 1994, two scientists at Rocketdyne’s Santa Susana Field Laboratory, Otto Heiney and Larry Pugh, “placed [rocket propellant] in a container over a bed of sawdust and then ignited [it] with an electric match to see how [it] would burn,” according [...]
ROCKET SLIME
By Michael Collins
LA Weekly – July 8, 1999
It’s been more than a decade since Rocketdyne shut down its nuclear-test site to focus on cleaning up the toxic goo contaminating its sprawling compound between Chatsworth and Simi Valley. The cleanup has been a long, slow process, with the aerospace giant fighting for ludicrously lenient standards every [...]
TOXIC SPRING
By Michael Collins
LA Weekly – August 5, 1999
Community groups have long protested defense contractor Rocketdyne’s failure to clean up toxic wastes at its Santa Susana Field Laboratory in the hills between the Simi and San Fernando valleys. But this week, it was a cleanup plan that raised hackles.
The state Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC) [...]
ROCKETDYING
By Michael Collins
LA Weekly – October 14, 1999
Military-industrial giant Rocketdyne has been reeling the last few weeks from a barrage of negative publicity about pollution problems at its Santa Susana Field Laboratory.
Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer has demanded a more stringent cleanup at the San Fernando/ Simi valleys–straddling site.
And Channel 2 News produced a [...]
ROCKETDYNE RUNAROUND
By Michael Collins
LA Weekly – January 11, 2000
This week, the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency issued an unprecedented invitation to community activists to tour three former Rocketdyne nuclear buildings to observe an environmental survey for radioactive contamination.
The media was invited as well to the site in the hills between the Simi and San Fernando [...]
THINGS ARE PERC-ING UP
By Michael Collins
Ventura County Reporter – February 12, 2003
Even veterans of the decades-old battle over Rocketdyne’s heavily polluted Santa Susana Field Laboratory were a bit awed Monday night.
Gone was the contentiousness that marked Rocketdyne community meetings over the last 10 years.
The standing-room-only crowd and parade of officials at Thousand Oaks’ Civic Arts Plaza [...]
FIRE ON THE MOUNTAIN
Simi Valley’s Rocketdyne facility was blasted by 50 years of rocket engines and nuclear reactor meltdowns, leaving a toxic disaster atop what residents call “The Hill.” Runoff may be poisoning Southland residents. And now the government just broke a promise to clean it up.
By Michael Collins and Sharon McKenna
Los Angeles ValleyBeat – June 12, 2003
Simi [...]
THE SINS OF ROCKETDYNE
By Michael Collins and Sharon McKenna
Los Angeles CityBeat/ValleyBeat – July 3, 2003
Last week’s news that the toxic chemical perchlorate was found gurgling from a groundwater well, nearly a mile outside the northern border of the Rocketdyne facility, shocked many Simi and San Fernando valley residents. But former Rocketdyne worker Lynwood Sibley was hardly surprised. Sibley [...]
PERCHLORATE PATROL
Cal-EPA comes down on Simi Valley’s Rocketdyne facility
By Michael Collins
Los Angeles ValleyBeat – October 23, 2003
The toxic leaks continue at the Rocketdyne lab in Simi Valley. After high levels of the toxic rocket fuel oxidizer perchlorate were found this summer near the facility, California’s Environmental Protection Agency (Cal-EPA) ordered the company to put together a [...]
TWO MILE ISLAND – CAUTION RADIATION
Supervisors vote to require groundwater testing
By Michael Collins
Ventura County Reporter – August 5, 2004
On August 3, Ventura County Supervisor Linda Parks’ precedent setting initiative to require testing for pollutants near the heavily contaminated Rocketdyne facility in Simi Valley won approval from the county’s Board of Supervisors on a 3-2 vote. Cheers erupted from a crowd [...]
