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  • New LA Weekly article – San Fernando Valley’s Galaxy of Goo – City planners make a slick zone change for easier building on troubled land
  • LA Department of City Planning rezones former aerospace and nuclear research site in west San Fernando Valley site to chagrin of residents. Corporate Pointe at West Hills gets green light.
  • February 26 vote codifies lower environmental standards for chemicals, radionuclides and heavy metals found at 81-acre property. Plan determines that no Environmental Impact Report is needed.
  • Local resident and cancer survivor starts digging in 1995 for environmental contamination on and under the site. “I was shocked to see widespread chemical and radiological contamination in the soil and groundwater.”
  • Groundwater contains forms of trichloroethene, dichloroethane, dichloroethene, trichlorofluoromethane, Freon, chromium, radium, and uranium — many of them near or exceeding their respective Maximum Contaminant Levels.
  • Aerospace giant Raytheon has been remediating groundwater since 1996. Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control board orders Raytheon to extensively rework what was found to be a “deficient technical report” to address problems involving uranium.
  • Formal zone change now approved by the Villaraigosa Administration, the cleanup target required of Raytheon for getting rid of uranium 238 officially relaxed by more than 32,378 times.
  • Well, tested in July 2008, produced water with more than 3,300 times the Maximum Contaminant Level for dichloroethene — a highly flammable, colorless liquid that causes sedation, inebriation, and convulsions. Standards lowered by four times.
  • Gases from soil beneath Corporate Pointe could intrude “into buildings,” the state’s own report reads. Cracked sewer lines remain uninspected and raise concerns about toxins leaching into soil underground.
  • “The statement that the site is contaminated with a wide variety of toxins is wholly unsupported and inaccurate as evidenced by the fact that were less than six opponents of that project at the [planning] hearing,” says Brad Cox, managing director of the Los Angeles office of Trammell Crow.
  • Unanimous planning decision now heads to LA city council planning and land use management committee. Citizens vow to bring demands for an Environmental Impact Report for Corporate Pointe to LA City Council.

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