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