Excerpt from the EnviroReporter.com exposé Brandeis-Bardin’s Toxic Denial:

Brandeis-Bardin is a working ranch with youngsters riding horses and taking hikes yet there is next to no mention on the university’s website of any potential hazards related to being in the watershed of SSFL. EnviroReporter.com can only confirm the presence of two or three warning signs nailed to one or two trees on the sprawling campus boasting “countless hiking trails” warning hikers of any contaminated water and none regarding potential dangers from dust inhalation and soil to skin contact. A 2007 photograph shows the signs nailed to an oak tree up Meier Canyon saying “WARNING DO NOT DRINK OR USE THIS WATER” and “NO HIKING BEYOND THIS POINT.”

While most of Area IV drains through the Southern Buffer Zone and Bell Canyon into the Los Angeles River, significant parts of it drain into Brandeis-Bardin down into the Arroyo Simi and groundwater which is used as blended drinking well water in eastern Simi Valley mixed with imported supplies. This watershed includes the still radioactively contaminated site of the Sodium Reactor Experiment.

24 Years of Award-Winning SSFL/Rocketdyne Reporting
June 1998June 2022