Search Results for 'radiation level'

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

IN HOT WATER

More good news about contamination from your friends at Rocketdyne
By Michael Collins
Ventura County Reporter – September 23, 2004

With new revelations coming almost monthly, the scope of the toxic mess at the Rocketdyne aerospace complex in the hills between the San Fernando and Simi valleys continues to grow. Radiological and chemical pollution at the vast Santa [...]

RADIATING OUTWARD

More good news about contamination from your friends at Rocketdyne
By Michael Collins
Los Angeles CityBeat/ValleyBeat – September 27, 2004

With new revelations coming almost monthly, the scope of the toxic mess at the Rocketdyne aerospace complex in the hills between the San Fernando and Simi valleys continues to grow. Radiological and chemical pollution at the vast Santa [...]

SOUR SATISFACTION

Boeing settles massive lawsuit over the Valley’s heavily polluted Rocketdyne site
By Michael Collins
Los Angeles CityBeat/ValleyBeat – October 6, 2005
For years, the residents of Simi Valley and western San Fernando Valley towns adjacent to Boeing’s Santa Susana Field Laboratory (SSFL) have claimed that the troubled site, polluted with myriad high-level toxins – including the remains of [...]

THE FALLOUT

Two new reports find elevated cancers and other risks within a few miles of Rocketdyne
By Michael Collins
Los Angeles ValleyBeat – February 16, 2006
On February 2, two long-anticipated UCLA studies analyzing cancer rates and toxic contamination around Boeing’s massive Santa Susana Field Laboratory were finally released. Years in the making, the reports don’t bode well for [...]

THE PROMISED LAND

Gov. Schwarzenegger terminates the uncertainty of Rocketdyne cleanup with historic move that keeps California in charge – for now
By Michael Collins
Ventura County Reporter – January 24, 2008
It was a move as deft as any he has ever made in his action films, this time potentially saving countless real lives. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger empowered the state’s [...]

LIVING NEXT TO A WAR FACTORY

Neighbors of closed Aerojet plant worry about their health and water
By Michael Collins
LA Weekly – May 11, 2000

Fred Sharp thought it was funny the time his son brought home 20 rounds of machine-gun ammo he had found in his Chino Hills neighborhood. But Sharp, a Vietnam vet and bomb expert, was less amused on March [...]

RUSSIANS, ROCKETS AND THE SANTA ANA RIVER

A closed weapons plant in the Chino Hills may be leaking hazardous chemicals into the Santa Ana River.
By Michael Collins
Orange County Weekly – May 18, 2000
Fred Sharp thought it was funny the time his son brought home 20 rounds of machine-gun ammo he had found in his Chino Hills neighborhood. But Sharp, a Vietnam vet [...]

ROCKETDYNE RANCH

The battle over the massive Ahmanson Ranch housing development heats up amid growing concerns about possible water and soil contamination from nearby Rocketdyne.
By Michael Collins
Ventura County Reporter – December 12, 2002
July 1959. Eastern Ventura County. Simi Valley folks squirmed uncomfortably in their chairs as they watched their flickering black and white television sets. They stared in nervous [...]

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.
by Michael Collins
EnviroReporter.com – May 18, 2006
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 [...]

NUCLEAR REACTIONS

Veterans Administration begins testing for radioactive waste beneath popular dog park and surrounding areas including Brentwood School
By Michael Collins
Los Angeles CityBeat/ValleyBeat – December 7, 2006
In direct response to a five-year CityBeat and EnviroReporter.com investigation into a biomedical nuclear waste dump in Brentwood, the Veterans Administration has begun testing soil and groundwater on its West Los [...]

HIDE AND SEEK

Brentwood School study finds no radiation on campus land leased from the VA, but bigger questions remain unanswered
By Michael Collins
Los Angeles CityBeat/ValleyBeat — February 22, 2007
In a January 30 letter to the parents of students at Brentwood School, headmaster Dr. Michael D. Pratt revealed that the exclusive private establishment had hired two firms in December [...]

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 [...]

VA Nuclear Dump Documents

December 17, 2009 – VA Statement on Barrington Park Environmental Study
After refusing to answer detailed questions about the soldiers’ tombstones in the biomedical nuclear and chemical dump, West LA VA director Donna Beiter claims grave markers treated appropriately. Bieter goes on to say that the $1 million testing in limited area of eastern arroyo in [...]

WHICH WAY THE WIND BLOWS

Runkle Canyon is poised to be Simi Valley’s newest neighborhood. But did the city misinterpret the risk of radioactive material in the ground?
By Michael Collins
Ventura County Reporter – March 17, 2005
Cattle graze on verdant hills as winter winds whip through the branches of centuries-old oaks on Runkle Canyon. Shrubby mulefat and willow scrub sway in [...]

SPIN CYCLE – LA CityBeat

Selling Runkle Canyon pollution report as clean
By Michael Collins
Los Angeles CityBeat – August 23, 2007

The headlines out of Ventura County last week must have pleased Simi Valley officials intent on convincing its citizenry of the benign nature of Runkle Canyon’s soil and water. This is where homebuilding giants KB Home and Lennar are intent on [...]

VERY DIRTY LAUNDRY

A new report on L.A.’s nuked Rocketdyne site finally catches the attention of mainstream media
By Michael Collins
Los Angeles CityBeat/ValleyBeat — October 12, 2006

A new five-year study of Boeing’s monstrously contaminated Santa Susana Field Laboratory (SSFL) sparked unprecedented mainstream print, radio, and television coverage last week. “Study Says Lab Meltdown Caused Cancer” blared an above-the-fold headline [...]

HOT ZONE

Rocketdyne’s Simi Valley Field Laboratory was on the frontlines of the Cold War. Now some who lived near “The Hill” say they share two distinctions: chronic illness and the unswerving belief that the lab caused it
By Michael Collins
Los Angeles magazine – June 1998
ON A HOT JULY NIGHT IN 1959, on flickering RCAs and Philcos and [...]

HOT PROPERTY

Runkle Canyon developers claim mysterious new state tests have erased previously high levels of Radioactive contamination
By Michael Collins
Los Angeles ValleyBeat – January 19, 2006

Much like Ahmanson Ranch, the huge housing development planned near the Los Angeles County border with Ventura that was instead turned into a park, proposed construction at Runkle Canyon faces its own [...]

THE HILLS HAVE EYES

Simi Valley residents unite to fight ‘hot’ KB Home development in Runkle Canyon
By Michael Collins
Los Angeles CityBeat/ValleyBeat – September 21, 2006

“I am not a tree hugger, an environmental activist, or an Erin Brockovich wannabe,” said Patricia Coryell before an August 21 meeting of the Simi Valley City Council. Coryell and about two dozen other concerned [...]

NEIGHBORHOOD THREAT – Annotated

Runkle Canyon is poised to be Simi Valley’s newest neighborhood. But did the city misinterpret the risk of radioactive material in the ground?
By Michael Collins
Los Angeles CityBeat/ValleyBeat – March 10, 2005

Cattle graze on verdant hills as winter winds whip through the branches of centuries-old oaks on Runkle Canyon. Shrubby mulefat and willow scrub sway in [...]

AHMANSON RANCH TIMELINE

How investigative reporting stopped a public health disaster
By Dean Kuipers
Los Angeles CityBeat/ValleyBeat – December 31, 2003

June 13, 2002: Collins writes “Earthly Secrets” for LA Weekly, questioning what was in the water and soil of Ahmanson Ranch which is owned by Washington Mutual.
Late June 2002: Residents hold up copies of the Weekly piece at a Ventura [...]