Rob Reiner’s Ranch

Ahmanson Ranch open space saved by Rob Reiner in 2003 should be renamed in his and his wife’s honor – the Rob and Michele Reiner Open Space Preserve

“Wow!” exclaimed Rob Reiner on October 1, 2003 under a blazing California sun and baby blue sky. “That perchlorate stuff really got them! Ever since you stood up at Taft High School and started talking about it!”

Reiner beamed at me at the invitation-only ceremony marking the creation of the 2,783 acre “Upper Las Virgenes Canyon Open Space Reserve” out of the former Ahmanson Ranch in eastern Ventura County bordering the San Fernando Valley.

Indeed, he had taken the rocket fuel oxidizer perchlorate contamination this reporter uncovered and sprinted with it over the finish line. Reiner secured the $2 billion former Washington Mutual development site of 3,050 homes that would have paved over paradise for the inconceivable price of just $150 million. Such was the willpower and magic of this man.

Robert Norman Reiner, with always equal partner wife Michele Singer Reiner, was most responsible for saving the wild beating heart of Southern California for time immemorial. It was the largest, in terms of money and size, public acquisition of pristine parklands in the histories of both Los Angeles and Ventura counties.

The multi-award-winning actor, producer and director’s successful Rally to Save Ahmanson Ranch group is among this amazing man’s most memorable accomplishments, which is truly saying something considering the American legend’s gifts to entertainment worldwide.

Rob Reiner also made possible this reporter’s promise to his father in the spring of 2002 after he’d recently learned he had terminal stage kidney cancer. Eschewing radiation and chemo therapies, my courageous Pops wanted to die at home in Irvine, California.

I swore to my dad that I would uncover the chemicals and radiation emanating from the ranch-bordering ‘Rocketdyne,’ the Santa Susana Field Laboratory (SSFL) and stop the development in its tracks before he died and ceremoniously give it to him for all to cherish. My father promised to try to live at least that long.

Having already reported on SSFL for five years, I knew that the undertested development’s future groundwater was going to be impacted by the goo flowing from under SSFL to the bordering ranch. The water was to be used as lawn and golf course irrigation to the tune of over 660,000 gallons a day. It just had to be tested and proven impacted in a significant way.

That’s where Reiner stepped up and made it happen. And my father lived to see that historic day, thanks to him. Now I’m here to return the favor, with your help, readers.–the renaming of the former Ahmanson Ranch to the Rob and Michele Reiner Open Space Preserve. That honor should be conferred as borne out by this story of us.

The Bucket List

When word of the impending sale of the ranch to the state leaked in early September 2003, I called my parents in Orange County. They were delighted that my dad’s bucket list wish that this ranch be saved had come true. We had turned it all the way up to 11, together for a final time in this mortal coil.

I later went to the Cat and Fiddle restaurant in Hollywood to stuff envelopes at a table drinking margaritas with fellow Los Angeles Press Club Board members. As I was sitting down, one board member, a famous Los Angeles Times columnist, smiled from under her trademark hat and, without looking up, said “Congratulations.”

That was one of the highlights of my journalistic career, to hear that from her. Ten years later in 2013, I tried to get this same literary legend to write this story, even as we both agreed it was bragging.

“What a worthy thing to brag about, the Ahmanson Ranch,” she wrote before passing on any writeup. “Well done, and so well-earned; that long-ago congratulations was hardly adequate.”

None of it would have happened without the Reiners. Sure, locals had been fighting development at Ahmanson since 1992 but it was in 2001 when Rob Reiner got onboard and supercharged the campaign by starting Rally to Save Ahmanson Ranch with HBO honcho Chris Albrecht. This was done before I had even heard of the place.

Rob Reiner’s leading role in creating the preserve has not been fully appreciated or rewarded. That could change here beginning with this extraordinary truth: Rob Reiner took the information that I provided and made it work for him in negotiations to wrest control of the ranch from WaMu. And it worked.

Reiner did that and a whole lot more. He did this in addition to his own amazing career and at great financial cost with nothing to gain from it materially – he lived nowhere near the place. Saving Ahmanson Ranch may be one of Reiner’s least known accomplishments.

The goal of this story is to change that. And you can become part of it by signing the Change.org [https://c.org/CWvCkKWMP7] petition attached to the article here. With enough signatures, the petition will be submitted to California Governor Gavin Newsom and the Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority (MRCA) which currently owns and administers the current preserve.

The newly named Rob and Michele Reiner Open Space Preserve would be a fitting honor for two great and beloved Americans. Nothing will relieve the pain of losing them, but at least there would be someplace magical to go that they made happen and is already up and operating.

Part of this plan could be a new Reiner-centric virtual online visitors center for the newly-renamed public preserve and a summer ‘Reiner Reels’ film series at the Victory Boulevard parking lot preserve entrance. Privately funded solar-powered webcams could be mounted throughout the property to allow non-visitors the pleasure of taking in the grand scenery from anywhere at any time, while providing added security in the wild zone.

The distance from this parking lot to the Las Virgenes Canyon preserve entrance is five kilometers which could inspire a yearly ‘Reiner Run’ of 5K and 10K through the land to raise funds for appropriate charities. Trails could be nicknamed online after famous Reiner movies including a Harry Trail and Sally Trail so folks could take selfies, and do their best Meg Ryan moaning best for TikTok at the ‘Where Harry Met Sally’ trail junction.

All this, under state authority, could be accomplished by perhaps a ‘Friends of Rob’ (FOR) non-profit supported by non-governmental funds that would help give people a place to remember the Reiners in such a positive light in an already heavenly untamed land while improving it for everyone.

A Few Good Men and Women

Rob Reiner’s central role in saving Ahmanson Ranch from development was long-established before this reporter started exposing the toxic contamination oozing into its groundwater from neighboring SSFL, commonly known as ‘Rocketdyne.’

The 2,850-acre Rocketdyne expanse is site of the infamous 1959 partial nuclear reactor meltdown of the Sodium Reactor Experiment and two other partial experimental nuclear reactor meltdowns in 1964 and 1969. SSFL is now owned by Boeing.

Laurie David, now ex-wife of Larry David, creator of “Seinfeld” and HBO’s “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” first told the Reiners of the fight over Ahmanson Ranch in the summer of 2001.

Then over dinner at the David’s home in the Pacific Palisades that fall, $100,000 was raised in a single evening to fuel Rally to Save Ahmanson Ranch, much of the money supplied by the Reiners.

Martin Sheen joined Reiner and Albrecht at a Nov. 14, 2001 press conference in front of the Canoga Park branch of Washington Mutual to announce the formation of Rally to Save Ahmanson Ranch. The Hollywood heavyweights said that it had forged an alliance with local environmental groups to stop the development including the Save Open Space organization out of Ventura County.

Washington Mutual acquired Ahmanson Ranch when it bought Home Savings of America in 1998. The Canoga Park branch was one of 400 that WaMu had in Southern California out of 2,000 nationwide. Washington Mutual was the sixth largest bank in the country before a rating downgrade prompted a run on the bank precipitating its failure five years after its Ahmanson Ranch development imploded in the fall of 2003.

Fond of talking smack about Reiner, Sheen, and, eventually, this reporter, through its vice president of communications, WaMu’s 2008 collapse was the largest bank failure in American history. It was a fitting end to an institution hell bent on ruining one of Southern California’s largest available wild open spaces only to be stopped by a toxin it should have already known was there.

Soon enough, Reiner convinced Martin Sheen to do radio ad voice-overs in Los Angeles and Ventura counties hammering the Washington Mutual development for the added 37,000 cars daily added to already horrendous 101 freeway congestion and environmental devastation. Indeed, 1,152 stately oak trees on the ranch would have been destroyed and 45 million cubic yards of dirt would be graded, the equivalent of 12 Rose Bowls full of soil right up to its rim.

That next spring, forty activists opposing the WaMu development boarded a bus for Seattle. Reiner, actress Alfre Woodard and famed environmentalist Erin Brockovich would meet them there in Washington state. Brockovitch worked with me on my first Rocketdyne article for Los Angeles magazine in 1998 called “Hot Zone.” She was the first person to show me a map of the mysterious lab among other things, this before the movie came out with Julia Roberts portraying her.

“In April 2002, Rob sponsored a bus for activists to drive up to Seattle from here, to lobby investors at a Washington Mutual annual meeting,” Oak Park resident Janna Orkney told The Acorn December 19, 2025 as she mourned the Reiners in a letter to the editor.

“I joined the group that included the mayor of Calabasas,” Orkney wrote. “Rob paid for the bus, and for our lodgings and food on the drive up and back. Rob met us outside the annual meeting in Seattle, and urged WAMU investors to not support the development of Ahmanson Ranch.”

Shock and Awe

“Earthly Secrets” came out in LA Weekly June 12, 2002 where I questioned what was in the future development’s groundwater. Later that month at a Ventura County planning meeting, residents held up the article and demanded answers.

A planning commissioner asked county Senior Planner, Dennis Hawkins, if he was going to do tests of the ranch’s groundwater. He replied yes to the astonished gasps in the crowd.

Afterwards, I asked him when he decided to do the new sampling and laboratory analysis. “About half an hour ago,” Hawkins snapped. “I couldn’t very well not since your article came out.”

On my way back to Los Angeles, I stopped by the ranch and hiked it for the first time, even though it was still WaMu’s private property. On one steep trail leading down a mountain pass, I took in the panorama and beseeched the powers that be for help in making sure that land was never developed even though I was not, and am not, a sinless man.

Suddenly – true story – a sand tornado arose from the trail like an apparition. It grew to a height of about twenty feet before dissipating. As I watched it in awe, I swore to God and country that this land wouldn’t be bulldozed over. While that seems overly dramatic by journalistic standards, it actually happened to me of all people. And the proof of its power is in the preserve.

The idea to get Reiner’s take on SSFL-related contamination threats to the ranch came from my mother. She told me about an upcoming Rally to Save Ahmanson Ranch taking place at Taft High School in Woodland Hills. My dad concurred and said that it would be the sure thing informing Reiner, who famously welcomed new ideas and pulled no celebrity attitude with regular folks like me.

While the test results of the groundwater tests still hadn’t been released, my hunch was that they would find perchlorate, a rocket fuel oxidizer that increases rocket thrust. Rocketdyne conducted over 30,000 rocket engine tests at SSFL using tons of perchlorate which significantly impacted the groundwater there.

Perchlorate has polluted groundwater across the nation, but no place worse than SSFL right next to millions of people. Fireworks and road flares are primarily fueled by perchlorate and SSFL officials have blamed pyrotechnics being thrown into wells for the hits of the toxin, as if people would believe that since tossing firecrackers into water just makes them go out meaning one would have to be an imbecile to do it.

Hits of perchlorate were also being found in Simi Valley groundwater wells not far from the lab. Perchlorate is a so-called ‘precursor chemical’ as it spreads in groundwater faster than other toxins from a place like SSFL. That means more goo will certainly come if perchlorate is found.

“Perchlorate’s interference with iodide uptake by the thyroid gland can decrease production of thyroid hormone, which is needed for prenatal and postnatal growth and development, as well as for normal metabolism and mental function in the adult,” says the California State Water Resources Control Board. “Perchlorate is regulated as an acutely toxic substance to reflect concerns about its potential for effects on the developing young.”

It was time to go to school and ask Rob Reiner about it.

You Can Handle the Truth

Around 250 people crowded into Taft High School for the Rally to Save Ahmanson Ranch event October 5, 2002 organized by Rob Reiner. The mock debate stage setup had an empty seat reserved for the head of Washington Mutual who, of course, wasn’t there.

Actors including Amy Smart and Dylan McDermott charged up the crowd that included Los Angeles Mayor Jim Hahn, journalist commentator Arriana Huffington and Monkees band member Micky Dolenz. The theme of the boisterous rally was to spur on attendees’ letter writing, talking to neighbors and closing their Washington Mutual accounts and loans.

When I got a chance to ask Reiner a question standing up in the seated audience, I went for it.

Los Angeles CityBeat editor Dean Kuipers wrote of the moment in this December 31, 2003 article: “Collins asks director Rob Reiner why his group isn’t talking about pollution possibly emanating from nearby Rocketdyne since Collins was uncovering evidence of chemical and radiological pollution (which he shared with the audience). Reiner obfuscates and Collins suggests that maybe it’s because many of the group’s supporters live near the Ranch and the information might affect their property values.”

As Reiner was leaving after the rally, we walked a moment together and all I said after our pleasantries meeting each other was “Use the perchlorate.”

Reiner nodded at me. He got it.

Rumor Has It

Months went by and I repeatedly pestered Ventura County for the groundwater retesting results. When I finally convinced them to send computer disks for a nominal fee, the disks were unreadable. Until they weren’t after much pleading.

Finally, there it was: Well #1, adjacent to the ranch and slated for the development’s irrigation use of 660,000 gallons a day, came back positive for perchlorate at 28 parts per billion, 14 times over what California considered safe for drinking water in 2003.

[2026: California lowered its public health goal for perchlorate in drinking water in 2025 by reducing the standard from 2 ppb to 1 ppb (1-ug/L) in 2015, effectively doubling its estimation of perchlorate’s toxicity.]

It was no longer a rumor that the bordering Santa Susana Field Laboratory’s galaxy of goo had impacted Washington Mutual’s Ahmanson Ranch plans. Hard data showed that one of the most contaminated sites in the country had upended WaMu’s dream of a city of mansions watered from an unsullied water supply.

Also found in the groundwater was antimony, a silvery-white metal that exceeded the government’s “maximum contaminant level” by 766 percent. Antimony in the air attaches to very small particles that may stay in the air for days, according to the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry. “Breathing high levels for a long time can irritate your eyes and lungs and cause heart and lung problems, stomach pain, diarrhea, vomiting, and stomach problems,” an agency document states.

Prying the voluminous Preliminary Final Supplemental Environmental Impact Report (SEIR) out of Ventura County senior planner Hawkins hands proved quite the chore. It was this document that the county’s board of Supervisors were to vote on to approve the Ahmanson Ranch project going forward in mid December 2002.

The SEIR, a 4,000-page document 4 inches thick, revealed that WaMu development construction would release 23,328 tons of dust into the air. The report used Rocketdyne’s polluted dirt as ‘control’ specimens to compare against and still found that Ahmanson Ranch earth was more radioactive than Rocketdyne’s.

Stand By Me

The scrappy Ventura County Reporter published “Rocketdyne Ranch” the week of the Ventura County Board of Supervisor hearings on Ahmanson Ranch’s SEIR beginning December 10, 2003. That cover story, which signaled the beginning of the end for the development, included Rob Reiner weighing in, now knowing what was in the groundwater – perchlorate.

“I am appalled that Washington Mutual will not do the appropriate testing to determine the extent of the contamination on Ahmanson Ranch,” Reiner told me for the article. The director was his affable self even though he was talking to the reporter who had challenged him in public.

“Moving forward on the Ahmanson Ranch project without further testing is irresponsible and puts the public’s health and safety at risk,” Reiner continued. “Ventura County and Washington Mutual have an obligation to determine the extent of the contamination on Ahmanson and to determine its source. We are talking about the health of children and families. This issue cannot be dismissed so easily when the public’s health and safety is at risk. Ventura County must take the time now to get all the information before moving forward.”

Numerous public commenters at the hearings waved around “Rocketdyne Ranch” infuriating Washington Mutual officials, lawyers and supporters with their “Build It!” signs. Regardless, the supervisors voted to approve the SEIR but not before one final twist.

Board Chair Supervisor John Flynn proposed successfully to include with the approval that Washington Mutual “consider” ways to build farmworker housing, especially in his heavily agricultural district of Oxnard. WaMu agreed and with this mysterious amendment, the project finally got county approval.

Flynn voted for Washington Mutual’s SEIR ensuring county passage even though his vote had been considered a tossup. The independent political powerhouse had been personally lobbied by former President Bill Clinton and his Vice President Al Gore to reject the WaMu SEIR, which he did not.

I asked Flynn why had voted for the development approval when he was giving me a Resolution from the Board of Supervisors of Ventura County honoring me in 2007. Had he flipped in his feelings about the project years later?

This maverick told me he didn’t want Washington Mutual to sue the county plus he wanted to wrangle some money from WaMu for migrant worker housing in the county. “Besides,” Flynn said with a smile, “I knew you and Reiner would stop the project.”

In November 2003, Washington Mutual, to its credit and Flynn’s craftiness, gave the county $250,000 for migrant housing after it had sold the ranch to the state for open space. John Flynn died in 2022 at the age of 89.

Not As You Wish

Even though WaMu had won the county’s nod December 19, 2003, it was livid that the Ventura County Reporter and Rob Reiner had blown the whole perchlorate and contamination connection of the development to SSFL wide open.

Wishing away the spreading bad publicity involved going directly after me and Reiner, claiming to fix the perchlorate problem and retesting the groundwater to see if tests positive again.

“The story “Rocketdyne Ranch” [Reporter, Dec. 12] is an outrageous hatchet job, one built almost entirely on deceptive editing and omission of fact,” wrote Tim McGarry, Vice President, Corporate Public Relations, Washington Mutual.

“This well is slated to supply irrigation water to the project, but Ahmanson has agreed to treat the water and remove perchlorate,” McGarry continued. “Treatment will produce water that meets state drinking water standards. This will also eliminate any rational basis for public health and safety concerns. However, many anti-Ahmanson figures like Rob Reiner want to pretend otherwise, however much Collins and his editors try to keep their readers in the dark.”

Of course, we responded and stood by our work. But the worst for WaMu was yet to come with the February 13, 2003 Ventura County Reporter exclusive “Air Apparent” which revealed that the U.S. The Environmental Protection Agency found that TCE [trichloroethylene] is 5 to 65 times more toxic than previously thought when inhaled. This is the article, in this reporter’s opinion, that put the final coffin nail in WaMu’s big Ahmanson Ranch plans.

Drinking small amounts of TCE for long periods may cause impaired immune system function, liver and kidney damage and impair fetal development in pregnant women. Larger drinking doses may cause liver damage, nausea, impaired heart function, unconsciousness or death. Breathing small amounts may cause dizziness, lung irritation, headaches, difficulty concentrating and poor coordination. Inhaling large amounts of TCE may cause unconsciousness, impaired heart function and death.

“The perchlorate is the ‘canary in the coal mine,’” said at the time the late Daniel Hirsch, president of the environmental watchdog group Committee to Bridge the Gap who died in 2025. Hirsch’s group was the first to discover the information regarding SSFL’s 1959 partial meltdown in obscure UCLA papers. “If the perchlorate is coming from Rocketdyne, then VOCs [toxic volatile organic compounds] including TCE are sure to follow along with a witch’s brew of poisonous radionuclides. The implications are potentially enormous not just for Simi and San Fernando residents but for folks buying homes at Ahmanson Ranch in the future.”

Mary Wiesbrock, of the environmental group Save Open Space, told the Reporter in 2003, “Rocketdyne data reveals that its closest extraction well to the (Ahmanson Ranch) development is over 480 times the toxic level of the government’s standard for trichloroethylene,” said Wiesbrock, an Agoura Hills resident living near the former ranch, had been leading the citizens’ fight against the Ahmanson land development since 1992 and was a Rob Reiner hero.

This avalanche of bad publicity forced proponents of the development to try a last ditch effort to salvage their sinking ship by having the government retest Ahmanson Ranch’s groundwater, especially the goo coming out of Well #1. Cue the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board (RWQCB) which clearly documented its July 16, 2003 sampling.

The conclusion was “[S]ampling data, preliminary from Ahmanson Land Co and RWQCB was non-detect for perchlorate and chlorinated VOCs.”

State government employees quickly pounced on the results. “You and Reiner may get your ranch, Collins,” said a water board official on resampling, “but there wasn’t any perchlorate in the groundwater. You were wrong.”

But Hirsch wasn’t fooled, proclaiming the results as “the best science money can buy.”

Meanwhile, in the summer of 2003, I was wrote more cover stories about Rocketdyne and Ahmanson Ranch in the debut issues of a new weekly alternative newspaper Los Angeles CityBeat/ValleyBeat born out of the Ventura County Reporter, expanding the media hammer of WaMu and SSFL’s pollution woes.

The Ventura County Reporter won first place at the Greater Los Angeles Press Club’s 45th Southern California Journalism Awards in June 2003 for “Investigative/Series” for “Rocketdyne Ranch” and the other 2002 pieces in the VC Reporter. The judges said “A thorough and well-written report, which even included the reporter using his own nuclear radiation monitor to find radiation that had been overlooked in previous inspections.”

[I returned to the former Ahmanson Ranch in 2013 with that nuclear radiation monitor and found four times background readings where the Upper Las Virgenes Canyon Open Space Preserve meets nuclear Area IV of the Santa Susana Field Laboratory, SSFL’s Southern Buffer Zone, and Runkle Canyon on a mountain top. The California Highway Patrol says three times background and above for radiation and chemicals requires a Haz-Mat response.]

The cracks in Washington Mutual’s Ahmanson Ranch burgeoning fiasco appeared in September 2003 when WaMu canned the executive leading the project for the last 17 years. Another executive with experience mainly in acquisitions and property sales, and not development, was brought in.

I also reported in ValleyBeat that the company was also in discussions with the state about the ranch. Washington Mutual’s Tim McGarry denied this was a factor in a July 8 email to ValleyBeat, in which he wrote that WaMu’s concerns about the Ranch did not “have anything to do with Rocketdyne.”

Others weren’t so sure. “I am very pleased to see that the media exposure about the pollution and contamination up at Rocketdyne has really made Washington Mutual take a second look and do the right thing, which is sell the land to the State,” said one Chatsworth resident and development opponent at the time. “That’s what we are hoping they will do now. It looks very, very hopeful.”

The Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, on August 25, agreed to enter into negotiations to purchase the sprawling site. The initiative advanced further on September 12, when the State Public Works Board approved the Conservancy’s plan.

And So It Goes

Mary Wiesbrock tearfully thanked me for our Ahmanson Ranch coverage, crediting it with shaking the issue loose. “If it wasn’t for your reporting, none of this would be happening,” she said in a moving telephone message. The Mary Wiesbrock Loop trail at the preserve was named after her for her devoted service saving the place.

After the October 1, 2003 opening ceremony at the ranch with Governor Gray Davis announcing the grand land acquisition, with Reiner and my laugh together over the perchlorate, the state closed escrow on the place November 14, 2003 for $150 million. According to the Los Angeles Times, “No park purchase in Ventura or Los Angeles counties has been larger in either land area or cost.”

The battle finally won, about 200 people gathered at an open space fundraiser May 16, 2004 at the 63-acre Hidden Hills estate of Dr. Richard and Elizabeth Grossman. They were there to celebrate defeating Washington Mutual’s Ahmanson Ranch development and fund raise for Mary Weisbrock’s environmental group.

“We threw a lot of heat and that is a lot of what has to happen but, in all honesty, you have to have somebody who is willing to fight the fight and keep it alive,” Reiner said at the gathering. “There are a lot of big powerful forces working against us and there’s a lot of courage in that. I know how to work with the media and that’s part of it too, to get people paying attention. So I know how to do that and was lucky that I could at least become aware of what was going on so we could do it.”

Before we parted after taking a few photographs, Reiner said to me, “That was good stuff that you suggested, the perchlorate, and actually did help us.”

My father passed away November 30, 2003, hours before the Upper Las Virgenes Canyon Open Space Preserve opened for the first time to the public December 1, 2003. I believe that he had to get there first to welcome all to the park I promised him.

Rob Reiner made that wish come true. Rob and Michele Reiner made all of our wishes come true with this everlasting gift of the preserve won through their efforts in league with some of the brave folks mentioned all too briefly in this piece.

Now it’s time to reward the Reiners for this timeless place for magnificent creatures to roam. It’s time for another wish to come true: renaming the former Ahmanson Ranch the “Rob and Michele Reiner Open Space Preserve.”

Sign the Change.org petition at https://c.org/CWvCkKWMP7