fbpx

Remote Brandeis-Bardin area may need cleanup, state officials see no health threat

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has verified that it has detected what it calls low levels of chemicals in soil in a remote area of the Brandeis-Bardin Institute in Simi Valley, downhill from a well-known former nuclear and rocket testing site.
[additional-authors]
December 7, 2016

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has verified that it has detected what it calls low levels of chemicals in soil in a remote area of the Brandeis-Bardin Institute in Simi Valley, downhill from a well-known former nuclear and rocket testing site.

The chemicals — found on rugged land almost two miles from the center of the institute’s popular Jewish summer youth camp, Camp Alonim — are not radioactive and pose no risk to human health, according to information the DOE provided to the Jewish Journal.

The department is weighing several options, including removing some soil from Brandeis-Bardin land, and will make sure that any cleanup will protect human health and the environment, according to the DOE.

The news comes as California regulators are preparing a major report on how to direct an upcoming cleanup of the shuttered, 2,850-acre testing site known as the Santa Susana Field Laboratory. Santa Susana is widely known among scientists as one of the most complex chemical and radiological sites in the nation.

The decontamination project could take 18 years and employ 250 workers, according to a July 2016 draft plan written by officials with the California Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC) and reviewed by the Journal.

DTSC officials, when asked about those figures, declined to confirm them, calling the draft plan a preliminary document that staff and managers had not fully reviewed and which is still being revised.

The chemicals detected at Brandeis-Bardin include metals, dioxins, pesticides, herbicides, and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, according to a DOE list provided by the DTSC.  It, too, said they were not found at levels harmful to human health.

The DOE testing was done in dry drainages in rocky, hard-to-reach terrain far south of the camp’s most active area. The sources of the chemicals are not known. Some may date to early agricultural operations on the land, which later housed the laboratory, the DOE information indicates.

Brandeis-Bardin spokesman Rabbi Jay Strear, in a prepared Nov. 28 statement issued to the Journal, described the substances as chemicals commonly associated with plastics, herbicides and pesticides, and the residue of forest fires. Strear is executive vice president of American Jewish University, formed in 2007 when the University of Judaism merged with the Brandeis-Bardin Institute.

A longtime Santa Susana site cleanup advocate, Daniel O. Hirsch, provided a different perspective. Hirsch, who directs the University of California, Santa Cruz program on Environmental and Nuclear Policy and is president of the nonprofit environmental group the Committee to Close the Gap, said that, based on his analysis, some of the chemicals may be tied to previous agricultural practices and many others could be associated with the old laboratory.

“This is not a huge risk, but it’s not zero,” said Hirsch, who has been monitoring the Santa Susana site for 37 years.

The recent chemical findings are yet another development in the old Santa Susana laboratory’s long history of generating controversy. Suspicion has dogged the cleanup debate for decades. Some nearby residents do not believe that state toxics regulators are being truthful about the risk of many contaminants remaining at the old site. Other residents call those concerns overblown.

The Journal learned about the soil findings from the July 2016 draft chapter of the long-awaited draft blueprint — called a Draft Programmatic Environmental Impact Report — that DTSC is preparing to guide the laboratory cleanup. The report may be released for public review this winter.

The group Consumer Watchdog obtained the draft document disclosing the possible DOE soil cleanup as part of a California Public Records Act request. The nonprofit, nonpartisan public interest group based in Santa Monica agreed to share the document with the Journal.

The draft mentions two other possible sites being eyed for soil removal.

One of the sites, also on Brandeis-Bardin property, could be in line for soil cleanup by NASA, the draft states. The testing for that site, too, was done in drainages in the remote, far southern reaches of the property. The amount of soil listed in the draft as a possible cleanup target would add up to one acre.

NASA’s Santa Susana site project director, Pete Zorba, said through a spokeswoman that the space agency has not specified any soil removal on Brandeis property. Given that the July 2016 DTSC document is a state record, Zorba referred questions to the DTSC, the spokeswoman said.

DOE and NASA both did extensive testing at the old laboratory and are two of three agencies responsible for decontaminating it.

The third is the Boeing Co., which confirmed last week that it has been working to remove contaminants on 18 acres occupied by Sage Ranch Park, a popular hiking and camping area close to the old laboratory. The contaminants are largely remnants of small pellets of lead and clay targets left by a former Rocketdyne employees’ gun club, a Boeing spokeswoman said.


Deborah Schoch has reported on environmental health issues during 18 years as a Los Angeles Times staff writer and as senior writer at the USC Center for Health Reporting. She can be contacted at Deborah.Schoch@icloud.com.


Camp Strear Brandeis Letter to Jewish Journal_16-1129 by Jeff Hensiek on Scribd

CAMP DTSC STREAR Answers to DS Questions Nov by Jeff Hensiek on Scribd

Did you enjoy this article?
You'll love our roundtable.

Editor's Picks

Latest Articles

More news and opinions than at a
Shabbat dinner, right in your inbox.

More news and opinions than at a Shabbat dinner, right in your inbox.

More news and opinions than at a Shabbat dinner, right in your inbox.