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 the breeze. An old corral lies partially submerged in rainwater as a foreboding sky promises another deluge in the otherwise dry and dusty dale. Finally, quacking mallards alight from a vernal pool, breaking the silence in this picturesque ravine on the southern border of Simi Valley.
In 1904, the Runkle family moved into this canyon to grow grain and walnuts, run a blacksmith shop, and manage a mule train running between the San Fernando and Simi valleys, all the while raising six kids. The ranch eventually became popular as a location for film and television Westerns. By the mid-1980s, a sand and gravel operation finally closed, leaving the canyon to joggers, hikers, and local troupes of hang gliders.
This Southern California version of paradise is exactly what drew Peter Kiesecker and the euphemistically named GreenPark Runkle Canyon, LLC, his Seal Beach-based development firm, to Runkle Canyon in the late 1990s. It’s a nice chunk of secluded green desert. And it’s empty.
Perfect, he thought, for a new Simi Valley neighborhood.
Of the original 1,595-acre Runkle Canyon spread, 140 acres are now slated to become home to 461 residences – nearly three hundred homes, 25 single-family estates, and 138 apartments for seniors, 62 of which would be set aside for affordable housing. Wrapped into the middle of the plan, GreenPark has left open the option of also building a 230-acre, 18-hole golf course. It’s the SoCal plan all over: a mix of residential options, a neighborhood park, and a plethora of outdoor pursuits. A move-in lifestyle. Runkle Canyon’s website crows that the development is eco-friendly, saying it “provides additional public recreational opportunities for the residents of Simi Valley.”
But Runkle Ranch has a problem, and it’s one that Kiesecker hopes he’s put behind him. This would-be paradise lies only a mile from aerospace giant Boeing’s heavily polluted Santa Susana Field Laboratory (SSFL), formerly known as Rocketdyne. During a battery of tests performed on Runkle property in 2003 as part of the required Environmental Impact Report, the toxic rocket fuel oxidizer perchlorate was found in groundwater/silt samples at approximately double the levels found in the groundwater under nearby Ahmanson Ranch, which is farther away from SSFL. Perchlorate findings were partly responsible for the sale of the Ahmanson property, which had also been slated for development, to become state park land. Critics maintain that this contamination must have come from the Boeing lab.
But they also found something even more disturbing: a radioactive substance called strontium-90 (Sr-90). In December 1998, when GreenPark began its environmental investigation of the property, the developer hired Phoenix-based QST Environmental to do preliminary soil sampling of the canyon to see if the former Rocketdyne lab “had impacted on-site soils, based on surface run-off carrying radionuclides to the site.” The results “indicated the presence of Strontium in all samples collected … that exceeded the EPA average local background concentration.” Indeed, the four soil samples contained up to 17 times the amount of the radionuclide that the EPA says is naturally occurring in the area. “Based on the analytical results of the soil samples, it would appear that there may have been some impact of radionuclides to the site from the Rocketdyne facility,” the report said.
Yet GreenPark’s subsequent environmental reports sailed past government agencies with no trouble at all. Despite the fact that, in the process of constructing the housing development, over three million cubic yards of soil will be graded and nearly a hundred tons of dust will be made airborne during construction of the homes.
Development critics now claim that the controversial developers of the already-approved project, and the city of Simi Valley, may have deliberately or inadvertently neglected to adequately address a potential radioactive dust-storm.
The professional
Peter Kiesecker is confident that his Environmental Impact Report (EIR) is accurate and that the development will proceed without a hitch. “When you do an EIR, it goes through the city, it goes through the county, it goes through the state and anyone can comment on an FEIR (Final EIR) at the public comment period,” says Kiesecker. “You go through extensive public analysis.”
