Calling biomedical nuke & chemical dump ‘green space’ for recreation will expose future veteran residents and VA workers to radiation
A comprehensive analysis of the Department of Veterans Affairs already approved draft master plan for its West Los Angeles VA campus finds repeated and coordinated instances of fraudulent information, an EnviroReporter.com investigation has found.
The 813-page document released January 28 to much fanfare misidentifies the biomedical nuclear and chemical dump as “green space” with no restrictions presently upon its use. Maps and charts indicate that the extensive dumping grounds are already being used for “recreation.”
That is false. The dump site is still under the oversight of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission [NRC] and is off limits to the public.
Exclusive 2019 Update: VICTORY AT THE VA – West LA Veterans Administration master plan protects old nuclear dump from development
A $2 million VA study of the site precipitated by EnviroReporter.com‘s reporting confirmed high radiation and chemicals as reported in West LA VA ‘master plan’ covers up its chemical and nuclear dump December 17, 2015. Radium, tritium, benzene and chloroform were some of the toxins found in the dump’s soil, groundwater and gas seeping out of the ground.
Reclassifying a confirmed toxic waste dump as recreational green space so future veteran residents can use the grounds without any remediation would seem ill-advised. Yet that is exactly what the VA is doing and it could save a bundle doing so.
Plus, there is little the public can do about it. The draft master plan is already approved and will not be taking any more public comment.
“During the 45-day public comment period, VA received a record setting 1,002 submissions,” VA Secretary Robert McDonald wrote in the plan’s executive summary. “These comments were carefully reviewed and considered in this revised framework Draft Master Plan.”
EnviroReporter.com‘s comment must have been missed. “Building in the dump area before thoroughly excavating it could lead to uncontrolled radiological and chemical releases to the environment, threaten the health and safety of workers during excavation and construction and of Veterans living in this part of the VA in the future,” the comment stated.” Impacted dust from excavation and construction could impact the public in apartments and condominiums along the dump on Barrington Avenue if excavation of the contamination doesn’t take place first.”
The draft master plan’s Existing Conditions and Site Analysis [3.8 MB; p. IV.17] has an “Existing Open Space” map that shades the entire dump the color that the map legend says is “Existing Green Space.” The analysis also says “With minimal intervention, the arroyo may be returned to a more natural form with naturalized grade and planting.”
That means no cleanup whatsoever even with a $2 million report showing that the expansive dump’s radiation and chemicals’ continuing impact on the environment. The VA claims that the expensive report says that the Brentwood dump is safe. But that declaration is predicated on the dump remaining as it is – left alone. While even that assessment is wrong as we have shown, it is based on leaving the land surrounded by fence and isolated.
The VA has not done a study on reworking the land of the dump that says it is safe to do so. What it has done is sneak into its draft master plans false maps, phony data and misleading information about how the process works regarding the dump.
The draft master plan has big plans for the VA dump and none of them involve remediating the land. They do involve renaming the area and misstating the legal status of the land. They also involve repeated attempts to misrepresent the land and then, based on those misrepresentations, include grading terraces, cutting new trails and building a plaza smack dab in the center of VA’s own nuclear and chemical disposal site.
Yet the very next page of the document has a key to the “Permitted Land Uses” of these three dump parcels. The “Current Use” is labeled as “GREEN SPACE/RECREATION (ARROYO).” The three parcels also have that same designation as their future “Preferred Use.” In other words, this land is supposedly already good to go and people are using it. That is false.
No wonder VA representatives were so eager to get away from EnviroReporter.com at the January 28 kickoff to the phony plan as previously reported in Brentwood nuke dump burns as VA finalizes draft master plan February 9. All the glad-handing in the world will not erase this shafting of America’s veterans who will be made to feel grateful to have a spiffy new park on top of a simple-to-dig-out nuclear waste disposal site that is going to be left in place.
Redefinition of the dump to harmless green space allows for the kind of map found in “Pedestrian Circulation” [p. V.38] where extensive new paths wander through the confirmed areas of the dump. The plaza planned for the center of site could be called Radiation Ravine or Tombstone Hill Plaza.
Getting the NRC to approve of any VA “change of status” to the dump and inviting a green space recreational area would be of no surprise as to EnviroReporter.com. Both federal agencies have a stake in keeping the dump buried and forgotten.
We first reported December 10, 2009 in LA Weekly about the cozy relationship between the NRC and West LA VA with an eye and ear witness account, which came as a result of visiting the dump multiple times to see how long before the VA noticed all the atomic tombstones on that were rising up out of the dirt.
In the early afternoon February 4, 2009, this reporter noticed a trio of men standing on a bluff overlooking the dump. One of the men looked different to me as I looked at him with binoculars. Perhaps it was the suit but something in me said ‘that guy’s NRC.’ It turns out I was right as I later discovered.
Subsequently, the men were walking near where I was. The NRC official said that the NRC had “signed off” on the place. “We gave you a pass,” he said to a man with a VA badge accompanied by a younger VA-badged man.
The NRC will undoubtedly give the VA another pass. But there is just one more obstacle – Secretary McDonald’s crew has to perform an environmental review. “VAGLAHS will further consider potential impacts associated with the draft master plan and the waste burial site in its National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) analysis,” the draft master plan says in Existing Conditions and Site Analysis. Of course, “consider” does not mean “will” as this carefully crafted passage shows.
Parsing the draft master plan reveals that VA may have already done its NEPA evaluation. “Sec. 1501.2 requires federal agencies to integrate the NEPA process with other planning at the earliest possible time to ensure that planning and decisions reflect environmental values, avoid delays later in the process, and head off potential conflicts,” says the draft master plan in Appendix E – Environmental Impact. “As such, the NEPA process was informally initiated within VA concurrent with development of the Draft Master Plan.” [Our emphasis]
That means that the phony maps and dump as green space designation switcheroo survived any sham environmental review because the NEPA team was aware of it the whole time.
While leaving the dump in place may save the VA headache and the American taxpayer a few dollars, it will be veterans who will pay the price for living next to Atomic Arroyo. So too will VA workers, gardeners, construction workers and possibly students and faculty of nearby Brentwood School.
The concept of actually cleaning up the site, and potentially paying veterans good wages to do it, seems lost on the Department of Veterans Affairs. Also lost on the public, veterans groups and political leaders is the grave dishonor being done to veterans even when the evidence is damning and indisputable. It is environmental folly, a FUBAR entirely of the VA’s making.
Exclusive 2019 Update: VICTORY AT THE VA – West LA Veterans Administration master plan protects old nuclear dump from development
Enviroreporter must be commended for exposing the highly toxic, pungent and foul smelling air that is released by the VA bureaucrats but actually created in the bowels of the ground that was donated specifically as a “HOME” for disabled Veterans. That is where you will find the special interest attorneys and manipulators that have orchestrated all of the “acid rain”, double talk, smoke and mirrors to lock-in long term Enhanced Use Leases and, since the last “invitation-only”, Community Veteran Engagement Board meeting, services for Veterans, classic “fox watching the chicken coop”, in this case, “evergreen data” for 75 years. The mold is getting real thick. The political power over an office boy turned Congressman and a Senator’s husband that has dictated policy on our gift-land for decades is, seemingly, impossible to breath. The special interests of Brentwood School, UCLA Baseball, Salvation Army (not military) housing project, oil drilling, Brentwood dog owners and the Veteran Park Conservancy are all frothing at their mutated bits because they think that the legislation, S2013 and HB3484, are slam dunks that will maintain their contamination. Don’t count your leases before they hatch. The forces of Veteran advocates from outside of California are coming into town with hazmat gear and a mission that will not “compromise” one inch of our land on a sham “first draft” plan.
Francisco Juarez
Operation Firing for Effect Veterans Advocacy Group
The NRC is going to okay anything the VA wants in that dump. They don’t want to shovel it out becuase theyre not just going to find radioactive animal bones but maybe a few old vets bones too. this place and UCLA both expeirmented on veterans. This is where they buried them mark my words.
Looking at LA Times dog park article yesterday called “Dog park and other tenants fight to remain on VA land in West L.A.” [http://www.latimes.com/local/westside/la-me-va-dog-park-20160301-story.html] and it struck me how nobody talks about this dump. Hell you can even see the torched palm trees behind some yuppies in the picture but nothing on the dump from the so-called paper of record. Then it occurred to me why- Veteranss aren’t screaming bloody murder over this because they are a cowed and beaten lot by the time the VA and its enhanced lease cronies are done working them over with BS praise and radiation left in place. I write this on the day American troops capture the ISIS leader in Iraq. We need them to capture their land here, make VA dig out that dump, and kick Brentwood School off the land unless they pay market value. Will it happen? Of course not. No Veterans here are up to it. Please stay on this story because your all we got.
There is nothing logical about building housing for elderly, ill and mentally disabled veterans right next to a radioactive dump site. There is nothing “kind to veterans” in their sitting in wheel chairs or on benches on top of a pile of radioactive waste.
The is nothing logical about Congress appropriating money under bills pushed by Senator Feinstein or Rep. Liu to build these facilities for Veterans, unless the nuclear rubbish is hauled away first and the soil and groundwater underneath it is cleaned-up.
That tells me only one thing: Some big general contractor is going to make a whole bunch of money developing this land for veterans housing, putting in the utility lines, building the buildings, pouring the “plaza” and sidewalk, buying the trees and installing the landscaping.
That’s how corporations and men get rich in their dealings with the Federal government, with state governments, with your city and county government. Building things for the government using tax dollars. Occasionally stupid things.
When I was a young woman I watched a brand new high rise Federal building get built in my home town, by a general contractor owned by a capo di regime of the western outpost of one of New York’s Five Families. The project was delayed and delayed. Here were huge cost overruns. When the building was done, its windows leaked like a sieve. But the Capo got paid.
Watch who gets the general contract to build this project. Watch who gets the subcontracts.
It’s been 40 years since a Mafia family built that high rise for the Feds in my old home town. The Mafia as I watched it back then is gone. The whole business of general contracting for the Federal government has become a much more equal opportunity scam these days.
Watch the campaign contribution reporting for every Federal politician who supports this project. I guarantee that you’re going to see contributions from general contractors, subcontractors, architects, engineers and developers. And that’s only the pay-for-play which is open and above board.
See, it is logical after all. A way to take taxpayer money and put it in private pockets using sick and injured Veterans as the pretext.
Those who pocket the money for building Veterans housing next to a nuclear waste dump will callously say “Who cares, those Veterans were going to die anyway.”
you busting out NRC and VA overhearing them is priceless. the photos are real keepers. ng has the motive right and chase the right answer. fat chance that going down unless people say ENOUGH!
This must be the fad among polluters and the agencies that enable and protect them – Got radioactive contamination? Make a park! A nice radioactive neon green space for all to enjoy, pay the price later with your health. They’re doing it at Rocky Flats and want to do it at Santa Susana. Oh people will just be there for a hike or stroll now and again so we don’t have to clean it up but that does NOTHING for protecting those who will be exposed to groundwater migration or say smoke from RADIOACTIVE BRUSH FIRES like what happened last month that you reported on. Now we learn they lied and already do have the land slated to be green space. Disgraceful and disgusting!
😐
Who do you call the District Attorney or the FBI?
Fraud is illegal… most of the time. 😉
* fraud – is deliberate deception to secure unfair or unlawful gain, or to deprive a victim of a legal right.
VA don’t care about vets that should be clear and also they do lie. It just came out they wasn’t even asnwering the suicide hotline, they was sending hurting vets to voice mail. So if they don’t care about a vet who wants to take his life of course they don’t care if he gets nuked on their (OUR!) land. Pretty maps with LIES trying to cover it all the pollution and VA and politicians patting themselves on the back. FOR WHAT? Thanks again for exposing them.
I think we all expected this — what could be more valuable than a large plot of land in West L.A.? What will attract more grifters and chiselers than the opportunity to make a bundle off of the public? They can rationalize it and lie about it all they want, but the VA is just trying to make someone a bundle of money. Too bad they have to poison West L.A. to do so.
Why the hell do these VA people take the job in the first place? Do they get satisfaction from this failure to perform their duties? How hard is it to dig out that dump? What are they hiding in there?
Marie/Marine wife
Semper Fi
Brentwood already has a black eye for OJ. We really don’t need this. VA has to clean up its act and realize that it has neighbors that don’t want this radiation toxin dump sitting there. So not cool.