The Santa Susana Field Laboratory Workgroup Meeting tonight from 6:30 pm until 10pm in Simi Valley at the Simi Valley Cultural Center. Discussion topics include updates from the Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC), U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board.
The meeting also includes a commemoration of the 1959 Sodium Reactor Experiment partial meltdown that we just wrote about in the LA Weekly article “Wrinkles in Runkle Canyon – As developers eye the land, is Boeing downplaying the old nuclear accident nearby?”
It’s likely that the Radiation Rangers will attend and may have questions of the panel about our revelations that Boeing lab director of Environment Health and Safety, Thomas D. Gallacher, in a report on offsite testing signed under penalty of perjury, said that no offsite testing had been done in Runkle Canyon and that it didn’t border the 2,850-acre lab, when the very same report shows otherwise. It will be interesting to hear what the DTSC’s Norm Riley, project head for the cleanup of the lab, will have to say about the reliability of this important report and its implications for trusting Boeing data which will be crucial for an effective cleanup.
Runkle Canyon was the subject of much discussion on March 16, 2005 at a Workgroup meeting at the arts center, just days after our initial exposé “Neighborhood Threat – Runkle Canyon is poised to be Simi Valley’s newest neighborhood. But did the city misinterpret the risk of radioactive material in the ground?” appeared in Los Angeles CityBeat.
We took fairly fuzzy photos from the balcony of the Workgroup panel and speakers coming up to a microphone for public comment. One man has CityBeat‘s “Neighborhood Threat” cover in hand and reads from it next to Runkle Canyon developers seated by him. They don’t seem too happy.
In 2006, the Radiation Rangers came into existence and have been part of the Runkle Canyon investigation ever since, now fifty years after the meltdown that may have contaminated the canyon they have been fighting to have cleaned up.
Santa Susana Field Laboratory Workgroup Meeting
6:30 pm until 10pm
Simi Valley Cultural Arts Center
3050 Los Angeles Ave., Simi Valley
Contact: David Cooper, Meeting Coordinator for EPA at 415-972-3245
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