VA Nuclear Dump Second Phase Testing

The VA begins its $1 million Phase Two assessment of the dump by coring in an area where VA maps show no contamination. A cluster of soldiers' tombstones protrude from a nearby hillside in the old nuke dump where maps suggest possible biomedical nuclear debris dumping.

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The unidentified contractors move their boring machine further south along the arroyo to a spot outside of VA diagrams of where dumping of radioactive material and chemical debris occurred. Men bypass center mound associated with Brentwood School athletic fields excavation that the VA had previously said contained biomedical waste.

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The third day of our observations of the Phase Two testing, and the fourth for the crew, saw the men set up the boring and coring machine even farther away from known parts of the dump.

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As the Core Probe team loaded up their Geoprobe self-propelled coring sampler, workers without face masks were engulfed by clouds of dust. This led us to wonder just what laws applied to this site and its maintenance. The answer was posted on the fence and led us to new revelations.

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The rain the night before made the dump muddy and the tombstones gleam white. At first, we couldn't find the work crew other than one man arranging barrels of dirt that had bolted on lids and "non-hazardous" stickers on them. The crew could then be heard boring at the farthest southern reaches of the fenced off dump, the furthest the men had cored away from the known area where radioactive and chemical contamination was dumped.

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