Radiation and chemical vapors on 47-acre Canoga Park site are too toxic for housing, but could be mitigated to safely house residents displaced by January 2025 fires in above-ground trailers.
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- Gross site contamination and development encumbrances prohibit residential housing
- Hundreds of FEMA trailers, mobile homes and even shipping containers could be placed on site safely and temporarily house thousands of Los Angeles disaster victims
- Efforts to clean up polluted west Valley groundwater could emulate 2024 agreement to remediate fouled east Valley aquifer and provide billions of gallons of clean water
The former Rocketdyne Canoga Park facility in the western San Fernando Valley is so contaminated that it is nearly impossible to build anything on it other than light industry even though a developer wanted to construct homes on the site.
Chemicals and radiation severely contaminate the land and groundwater in and around the site according to documentation obtained by EnviroReporter.com.
According to astonishing information never before covered in the media, areas offsite and around Rocketdyne Canoga are hot with high amounts of gross alpha and uranium radiation.
EnviroReporter.com has also obtained and analyzed a 836-page June 2024 report for local water authorities that shows huge readings of carcinogenic volatile organic compounds (VOC’s) fuming up through the ground in the same huge area including astronomical levels of perchloroethylene (PCE), trichloroethylene (TCE), and chloroform.
Though the area aspires to become the ‘downtown’ of the west San Fernando Valley, the history of pollution from aerospace and experimental nuclear reactor work make building apartments and condos on this infamous site a long shot. But FEMA mobile homes could be safely placed across Rocketdyne Canoga’s 47-acre flat expanse for temporary use fairly quickly, easily and at moderate expense.
Mind you, this idea doesn’t come from a Trona Pictures B-movie, but rather a veteran environmental journalist whose discoveries of toxic chemicals under Ahmanson Ranch from the Santa Susana Field Laboratory (SSFL) led to the tanking of a 3.050-home development there and the creation of the Upper Las Virgenes Open Space Preserve.
Now that Los Angeles itself is contaminated with thousands of charred homes and businesses covered in deadly chemicals, dioxins and heavy metals unleashed by the fires, safely housing displaced residents seeking FEMA help is one way that this controversial land could be put to use since it has become relatively safer through prior contaminated soil removal after the giant Rocketdyne Canoga complex was demolished nine years ago. The property is now owned by Raytheon Technologies.
Rebuilding efforts will take years, so allowing temporary FEMA trailers to provide longer-term housing could be a realistic and fast way to address this problem, especially now since California Governor Gavin Newsom jettisoned environmental regulations for new construction in order to speed up fire recovery.
EnviroReporter.com has uncovered documentation that shows that the site area is even more contaminated than previously known. That makes this nearly-undevelopable lot suitable only for elevated trailers and mobile homes for emergency housing since they can be made safe from VOCs.
Extremely high levels of the carcinogenic solvents PCE and TCE were used and dumped at the old Rocketdyne plant and have polluted the groundwater along with gross alpha and uranium radiation.
Recent sampling and testing revealed the troubling result that the PCE and TCE were vaporizing up through the soil, including near areas where hundreds of luxurious apartments are located next to the contaminated former rocket engine production facility.
EnviroReporter.com’s findings suggest that the Raytheon land will never be adequately cleaned up enough to allow much needed residences or even heavy industry as digging deep below ground is prohibited by a covenant signed by the company and the city of Los Angeles.
That covenant is the subject of a contentious lawsuit by a developer who paid $150 million dollars to build the site out for condominiums and homes.
The large flat rectangular stretch of land is currently surrounded by chain link fence, and is conveniently located next to the Gold Line of the Los Angeles Metropolitan Transportation Authority or MTA.
That makes this controversial land a superb space for an emergency FEMA trailer park installation that could house victims of the current Southland infernos almost immediately without the local building and safety bureaucracy delays and expense.
FEMA has thousands of furnished mobile homes and somewhat smaller trailers that, according to federal regulations, can house displaced Americans from disaster for up to six months.
The ongoing threat of catastrophic wildfires in Southern California, along with the ever-present threat of the Big One earthquake, make this site the optimal candidate for a permanent-temporary mobile home park that could go online in a relatively short period of time.
Mobile homes and trailers, by nature, are several feet off the ground and would not be subject to the poisonous vapors emitted from the soil containing the various contaminants that pollute the site including perchloroethylene, trichloroethylene, chloroform, uranium and gross alpha radiation.
The vast expanse of land located at Vanowen and Canoga is an invaluable open space that the city of Los Angeles okayed for the ambitious Warner Center 2035 project.
That project, however, appears to be stalled as toxic industrial chemical vapors continue to migrate up through the soil on the property and around its perimeters as it makes its way northeast underground in a groundwater plume.
One small step for man, one giant leap for contamination
The current Rocketdyne Canoga property originally was part of a 1954 purchase of the land by North American Aviation which then gave it to the Air Force. The facility was named Air Force Plant No. 56 and Rocketdyne was contracted to run it, eventually building its headquarters on the corner of Canoga Avenue and Vanowen Boulevard in 1960.
Among the many accomplishments of Rocketdyne Canoga was the designing and building of the Saturn 5 rocket engines which propelled the United States to the moon on Apollo spacecraft. The plant also worked on the engines of the Space Shuttle which ended as a program in 2011.
Rocketdyne Canoga was then sold to Pratt and Whitney before it was later bought by Aerojet in 2013 from Boeing to form present day Aerojet Rocketdyne, which has nothing to do with the now-flattened Canoga facility, demolished in the summer of 2016.
Contamination of Rocketdyne Canoga and the surrounding environs has long been known but the 2024 report analyzed by EnviroReporter.com reveals deadly toxins at extremely high levels never explained publicly.
The most widespread non-radioactive contaminant is PCE which was tested across the street at a well near the parking structure at the Westfield Topanga Mall at 8.6 times its “Commercial/Industrial Groundwater Vapor Intrusion Human Health Risk Level” (commercial risk level).
This PCE detection of contamination comes as no surprise considering how much of the stuff was used at Rocketdyne Canoga. An EPA report from 2021 reported that 49,140 pounds of PCE were released from the site in 1991. That’s 24.57 tons of PCE in just one year. In 1992, an additional 3.60 tons escaped the facility.
With the groundwater plume spreading in the northeasterly direction, PCE was detected on Millwood Avenue at three times the “Residential Groundwater Vapor Intrusion Human Health Risk Level” (residential risk level) and 18.8 times the residential risk level on Eton Avenue.
Massive luxury apartment buildings crowd the neighborhood near where these tests have been performed, according to detailed maps of the area included in the report. Ranging from three to seven stories, these modern residential structures total 1,235 units and house thousands of people.
EnviroReporter.com found no evidence that these new apartment blocks have any vapor intrusion control systems in place that would capture and contain virulent VOCs including PCE and TCE. Indeed, no information was obtainable that indicated that the residents of these expensive abodes even knew about the dangers of the groundwater vapors and soil vapors possibly under or near their residences.
Both PCE and TCE were used as degreasers at Rocketdyne Canoga because of their effectiveness at removing particles from rocket engines and their components. That effectiveness was enhanced by these VOCs’ ability to evaporate quickly and completely, qualities that make them especially dangerous when percolating up through the ground.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said in 2002 that “tetrachloroethylene [PCE] exposure may harm the nervous system, liver, kidneys, and reproductive system, and may be harmful to unborn children”, and the EPA noted that it was considered a carcinogen by numerous toxicology agencies.
TCE was measured in the groundwater in the 2024 report and was found to have nearly double the commercial risk level adjacent to the Canoga Orange Line Station where thousands of people commute. EnviroReporter.com has obtained an archival map that shows that the area contained a “TCE distillation unit and storage tanks” hard on the border of the Southern Pacific Railroad right of way which is currently the MTA Orange Line.
“Drinking small amounts of TCE for long periods may cause impaired immune system function, liver and kidney damage and impair fetal development in pregnant women,” this reporter wrote in a 2003 article called “Air Apparent” on the proposed Ahmanson Ranch development in western Ventura County on the border with Los Angeles County. “Larger drinking doses may cause liver damage, nausea, impaired heart function, unconsciousness or death. Breathing small amounts may cause dizziness, lung irritation, headaches, difficulty concentrating and poor coordination. Inhaling large amounts of TCE may cause unconsciousness, impaired heart function and death.”
Bonnie Klea knows all about the effects of TCE from Rocketdyne Canoga. “My last few years of employment were at Canoga,” Klea told EnviroReporter.com. “My first day at Canoga I developed a severe migraine and spent the day in the restroom.”
Klea was the subject of our 2010 cover story “Atomic Avenger” for her work getting compensation for aerospace workers who became sick from radiation at Rocketdyne Canoga, Rocketdyne De Soto, and the Santa Susana Field Laboratory that we have reported on since 1998. Klea has helped hundreds of Cold War-era nuclear workers in Southern California and across the nation.
“Looking back now they had large vats of TCE and some of the men showered with TCE to get the grease off,” Klea wrote in a recent email. “The Vanowen building housed a plutonium lab and reactors. I don’t believe it can ever be cleaned because the plume has moved so far. I thought an Amazon Warehouse would be a good idea because it would be mostly machines. A park would not work because it would be filled with the homeless.”
TCE and PCE aren’t the only chemical toxins contaminating the groundwater around Rocketdyne Canoga according to the 2024 report.
Vinyl chloride is a carcinogen that can cause brian and lung tumors, malignant lymphatic tumors with continuous exposure leading to decreased male libido, birth defects and miscarriages. Vinyl chloride was measured at over 50 times the residential risk level on Eton Avenue to the east of Rocketdyne Canoga.
VOC gases around Rocketdyne Canoga were measured in the soil as well as the groundwater, as both mediums give off these noxious fumes. The 2024 report found alarming levels of benzene, chloroform, ethylbenzene, PCE, TCE and vinyl chloride the soil gas vapors.
Longer-term exposure to benzene, famously known as a carcinogen in cigarette smoke, can increase the likelihood of blood disorders and cancers like leukemia. That’s not good news for a 60-unit condominium complex overlooking the concrete headwaters of the Los Angeles River north of the Rocketdyne Canoga perimeter.
The three story group of buildings was built in 1986 and had a benzene soil gas reading 83 times the residential risk level. An April 16, 2024 test read at over twice the residential risk level for TCE too.
The nearby Westfield Topanga mall had over double the commercial risk of benzene in an area now covered by a parking lot. The mall, which now seems nearly deserted as online businesses and Amazon deliveries have gutted its businesses, also revealed through recent tests 12 exceedances of the commercial risk level of PCE on the property. The highest PCE reading was a whopping 64.2 the commercial risk level.
Westfield Topanga also tested at five times the commercial risk level for vinyl chloride on December 6, 2023.
Originally named Topanga Plaza, the complex opened in early 1964 and was California’s first significant enclosed indoor shopping mall. That was six years before then Governor Ronald Reagan signed into law the California Environmental Quality Act or CEQA.
This reporter began querying Westfield in 2009 as to why the shopping center apparently did not carry out mitigation measures as required in a 1992 CEQA Environmental Impact Report, or EIR, when major construction on the aging mall was to take place. The response appeared to be the runaround and then, after further pressure, became silent.
“Give me a little more time,” Westfield spokesperson Katy Dickey said in a May 8, 2009 email to EnviroReporter.com when first questioned about the issue. “I think the short answer there was no action required because of the gradient and stuff but I want to get a couple more things, you know, ducks in a row so I can accurately and clearly get you an answer and help you out,”
EnviroReporter.com pressed the question in an email to Dickey one week later.
“Other than you [Dickey] telling me that you have an October 2, 1997 letter from the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board (LARWQCB) saying that developer/owner/Westfield need take no remedial actions dictated by the 1992 EIR, which you said you are still deciding if you will or won’t send to me, and a 2005 in-house, proprietary report that you said concluded that the “mall is upgradient from Rocketdyne so water is not flowing there,” which you said I can’t obtain, there is no indication that Westfield was ever relieved of its EIR environmental mitigation responsibilities.”
No response was apparently ever given to or received by EnviroReporter.com. Yet the reasoning for no mitigation measures on the property being that it is an upgradient from Rocketdyne Canoga facility is only valid to a certain extent. Indeed, the facility is upgradient in terms of groundwater motion beneath the surface of both the mall and the former aerospace production facility. But according to maps acquired by EnviroReporter.com, detections of PCE are shown spreading laterally against this upgradient and towards the center of the mall from the southeast corner of the property.
Hot Stuff
Before our friend Steve Cain, former senior environmental planner for the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board (LARWQCB), died in his sleep in late 2009, he gave this reporter information on the Rocketdyne Canoga facility. “You’ll know what to do with this,” he said with a gleam in his eye. “It’s hot!”
The data that Cain gave this reporter was a treasure trove of information showing radiation readings across the Rocketdyne Canoga facility in 1989 that also included off-site measurements. Those groundwater radiation tests included three wells along the east side of the Westfield Topanga lot, right across the street from Rocketdyne Canoga.
The total uranium for the three wells registered between nearly twice the Maximum Contaminant Level (MCL) for California drinking water up to 2.7 times the MCL. Gross alpha radiation ranged from over double its MCL to 3.6 times this limit.
No drinking water is extracted from the groundwater under Rocketdyne Canoga, the Westfield Topanga mall and the surrounding area due to the intense contamination from chemical and radioactive substances described in this investigation.
In a region starved for rain, this groundwater would be an invaluable and crucial source for the western San Fernando Valley if it were indeed cleaned up. EnviroReporter.com’s review of LARWQCB’s monitoring of attempts to clean up the polluted groundwater under and around the Rocketdyne Canoga facility shows that injections of various substances designed to biologically degrade the nasty constituents beneath the area have failed.
A November 29, 2016 LARWQCB memorandum obtained by EnviroReporter.com says that “no significant groundwater degradation has been observed as a result of EVO [emulsified vegetable oil] and DHC [Dehalococcoides, a dechlorinating bacteria] injection at the site.”
Regardless, this kind of groundwater cleanup is the preferred method according to veteran VOC expert Lenny Siegel, executive director of the Mountain View, California-based Center for Public Environmental Oversight.
“I consider in situ bioremediation of volatile organic compounds superior to extraction and ex situ treatment because it actually destroys the contaminants and uses less water and energy,” Siegel said via email. “Air stripping releases PCE and TCE into the air while allowing non-volatile contamination, such as PFAS, to be released through liquid effluent. Contamination trapped in carbon filters remains an environmental risk. Carbon filters are usually regenerated through thermal treatment (incineration) in a community of color.”
Yet even with these technical challenges, Honeywell International Inc. reached an cooperative agreement in the Fall of 2024 with the EPA and Los Angeles Department of Water and Power to clean up the fouled groundwater in the eastern San Fernando Valley which is a Superfund site.
These efforts will produce about 4.9 billion gallons of cleaned groundwater annually and will service the needs of hundreds of thousands Los Angeles residents. This should save ratepayers up to $717 million over the next 50 years from not having to purchase replacement water.
So why couldn’t the Rocketdyne Canoga site emulate this promising agreement and remediate its water and then donate its land to, say, the city of Los Angeles? Perhaps the new place could be called Parque Yaa named after the local Native American Tongva word for Los Angeles preceded by the Spanish name for park.
Not so fast, says Siegel. This isn’t exactly pristine and perfect property to make a massive public park.
“The presence of non-volatile contaminants, such as heavy metals or radionuclides, may make it difficult to convert the property to a park,” Siegel said. “Also, the local government may not want to take ownership of property with a significant environmental liability. In some cases, the value added through development can actually help pay for the cleanup, but that should not be necessary at the Rocketdyne Canoga Park site because Boeing still has the money to pay for cleanup, if required.”
If required. That appears unlikely if Boeing’s foot dragging on the cleanup of the nearby Santa Susana Field Laboratory is any measure. This reporter has covered lab issues since 1998 and the state and federal government’s oversight of the place has resulted in allowing Boeing to leave vast amounts of radioactive and chemically-impacted soil and groundwater in situ. Besides, multiple previous owners of the Rocketdyne Canoga property may be on the hook for cleanup expenses other than Boeing.
Trailer Park Promise
Which brings us to what a Rocketdyne Canoga site could become and become quickly: a FEMA trailer park built safely over toxic land and operated by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
FEMA has thousands of mobile homes and trailers that could be placed on the Rocketdyne Canoga site and controlled by the government to ensure effective and safe conditions for folks needing help. The fact that these structures are built up off the ground makes the issue of volatile organic chemicals vaporizing up into these homes mute.
Another factor in assessing the viability of this idea is the new reality that Southern California has been covered with a layer of toxic ash that won’t go away simply because it can be ignored or has been partially washed into the sea by rain. Plus, microscopic fire ash dust is being continuously recirculated into the air by wind and human activity making it the toxic gift that keeps on giving making constant outdoor use of N-95 masks crucial for an informed populace in the fire areas.
Indeed, the contamination in and around Rocketdyne Canoga, in the soil and groundwater, may be here to stay, despite aggressive measures like the recent one to curb the threat of TCE initiated by President Joe Biden in his final days in office.
A new EPA rule eliminating TCE exposure to the public went into effect December 17, 2024. Its scope was ambitious and could have prevented untold numbers of future cancers, as the rule states:
“EPA’s final rule will, among other things, prevent serious illness associated with uncontrolled exposures to the chemical by preventing consumer access to the chemical, restricting the industrial and commercial use of the chemical while also allowing for a reasonable transition period with interim worker protections in place where an industrial and commercial use of the chemical is being prohibited, and provide time-limited exemptions for critical or essential uses of TCE for which no technically and economically feasible safer alternatives are available.”
Then Donald Trump took over and his longstanding antipathy to science and public health came on full display when the new Republican majority in the House of Representatives issued a joint resolution “Providing for congressional disapproval” of the long-sought EPA rule to rein in TCE’s toxic vapors January 22.
This coordinated assault on America’s emergency infrastructure may also claim FEMA as another Trump victim. “ FEMA has been a very big disappointment,” Trump claimed in North Carolina January 24. “And they cost a tremendous amount of money. It’s very bureaucratic. And it’s very slow.”
Assuming Trump kills the TCE ban along with previously required cleanups of the goo, as well as his administration gutting FEMA and forcing states to reckon with disasters on their own, California will be left to its own resources.
EnviroReporter.com has found thousands of empty 20-foot and 40-foot metal shipping containers on Earle Street in Terminal Island, part of the huge Port of Los Angeles between San Pedro and Long Beach. These good-to-go iron boxes can be made into home shelters for between $10,000 and $50,000 and installed up off the ground on foundations that allow utility hardware access to the modules. This would also prevent VOCs from fuming the dwellings.
A successful building and operation at the Rocketdyne Canoga site could also lead to creating other emergency dwellings on available land and alleviate some of the suffering that Los Angelenos burned out of their homes now face. Iron shipping containers could also be repurposed to rebuild in wildfire vulnerable areas.
“Necessity is the mother of invention,” said philosopher Plato thousands of years ago. With no time to waste, the Rocketdyne Canoga acreage could quickly become a refuge of choice in Los Angeles.
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