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Early attempts to locate the dump

Exclusive 2019 Update: VICTORY AT THE VA – West LA Veterans Administration master plan protects old nuclear dump from development

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Incline leading south into underdeveloped VA land. According to archival maps, the dump is in the area to the left of road in this photo.

Dan Hirsch, in white lab coat, leads a group of citizens and scientists in an eventually fruitelss effort to find evidence of the nuke dump buried on West L.A. VA property.

More futile searching. Hirsch's group, the Committee to Bridge the Gap, discovered the heretofore unpublicized biomedical dump on land in Bentwood California.

Hirsch, sans lab coat, points into ravine where archival maps show part of the dump to be buried.

The Radiation Safety Officer told Hirsch at the time that the radioactive waste was not buried in the bottom of the ravine but up along the sides and to the west of it.

Debris from the former VA hospital damaged by the 1971 Sylmar earthquake, and then demolished and dumped over part of the nuke dump site. Debris includes asbestos.

North-looking perspective of ravine towards what would become the Brentwood School shared lease area. Veterans say that the "shared" moniker is misleading.

South-looking perspective of ravine shows how deep and narrow it used to be. December 2006 tests of ravine were useless: radiation measurements were atop 5,000 truck loads of dirt making the expensive work useless.

West L.A. VA buildings in background. Note how narrow arroyo used to be.

Southern edge of MacArthur Field with old support buildings and bathroom visible beyond densely vegetated ravine. Such plant growth helped make it impossible to locate dump over a quarter of a century ago.

West-looking perspective of dump ravine from MacArthur Field. Note that the Barrington Recreational Center built over part of the dump had yet to be constructed.

This perspective doesn't show today's broadening and filling in of the arroyo but does capture size of mesa eventually used as Barrington Rec Center including dog park.