[CPEO-MEF] Runkle Canyon and Rocketdyne (CA)

[Lenny Siegel <lennysiegel@gmail.com>]

The Radiation Rangers
Developers of Simi Valley's Runkle Canyon claim the water tested clean. 
Then a band of citizens discovered super-toxic goo seeping from the ground

By MICHAEL COLLINS
Los Angeles City Beat
June 21, 2007


he sweating point man leads a small group up the dusty inclines of 
Runkle Canyon. This undeveloped swath of chaparral near the town of Simi 
Valley is where KB Homes hopes to build 461 residences. The unforgiving 
sun blazes as Terry Matheney heads toward the same creek water that he 
had already warned the city was suspiciously shiny, with an oily sheen 
that should be tested for toxins. He volunteered to take them there.

The city declined, saying the developer had already done tests on the 
surface water in 2003, examining one sample on the 1,595 acre property. 
So, one week before this day's march, Matheney went to collect the gooey 
fluid himself. He was in for a big surprise.

"I was filling these plastic bottles when my chemical gloves started 
bubbling," says Matheney. "I couldn't believe it! I thought it's 
obviously eating its way through my gloves so I just tore them right off 
of me because it looked like it was permeating the rubber!"

Serious as it is, the story sets off gales of laughter. Matheney's a 
genial sort, a creature of these dry and dusty dells about 35 miles 
northwest of downtown Los Angeles where he hikes with his dog Jake. He 
works at AeroVironment in Simi Valley, a defense contractor that tricks 
out spy planes with names like Hawk Eye, Switchblade, and the Global 
Observer.

But the man is angry. He thinks there's something obviously wrong with 
Runkle Canyon. It is, after all, next to the Santa Susana Field 
Laboratory (SSFL), otherwise known as Rocketdyne, site of innumerable 
rocket tests and the worst nuclear meltdown in American history, spewing 
radiation from the unconfined Sodium Reactor Experiment the night 
then-Vice President Nixon squared off against ex-Soviet Premier Nikita 
Khrushchev in the famous Kitchen Debate in 1959. The effects of that 
meltdown would be felt decades later.

...

For the entire article, see
http://www.lacitybeat.com/article.php?id=5703&IssueNum=211

--


Lenny Siegel
Director, Center for Public Environmental Oversight
c/o PSC, 278-A Hope St., Mountain View, CA 94041
Voice: 650/961-8918 or 650/969-1545
Fax: 650/961-8918
<lsiegel@cpeo.org>
http://www.cpeo.org

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