Protestors want SSFL cleaned up

Community moved by Simi girl’s death, broken promises



SICK AND TIRED— Above, community members demand the Santa Susana Field be cleaned up. At right, 7-year-old Hazel Hammersley of Simi Valley, who succumbed to neuroblastoma. MELISSA SIMON/Acorn Newspapers

SICK AND TIRED— Above, community members demand the Santa Susana Field be cleaned up. At right, 7-year-old Hazel Hammersley of Simi Valley, who succumbed to neuroblastoma. MELISSA SIMON/Acorn Newspapers

Fueled by anger over broken promises to clean up the Santa Susana Field Lab and the recent loss of a Simi Valley girl to cancer, dozens of community members called on the agencies responsible for remediation to “just do what they said they would.”

West Hills resident Melissa Bumstead helped organize the group to protest at the April 10 biannual meeting hosted by the Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC), which oversees cleanup at the site.

Courtesy of Jennifer Carrillo Photography

Courtesy of Jennifer Carrillo Photography

“Losing Hazel (Hammersley) has been devastating to us, but her mother (Lauren Hammersley) wants us to use her passing to push even harder for this cleanup,” Bumstead said.

Hazel, 7, died March 30 after succombing to neuroblastoma, Bumstead said. And the girl’s mother suspects her cancer was caused by exposure to contaminated runoff from SSFL.

“Tonight is in honor of Hazel, who touched thousands of lives. She was kind, funny and compassionate,” said Bumstead, whose own 8-year-old daughter, Grace, has been fighting a rare cancer. “No parent should ever have to pray for a quick passing; that should never be the miracle.”

SSFL— Sodium Pump Test Facility, DOE Property, Area IV at Santa Susana Field Laboratory. Photos by MICHAEL COONSAcorn Newspapers

SSFL— Sodium Pump Test Facility, DOE Property, Area IV at Santa Susana Field Laboratory. Photos by MICHAEL COONSAcorn Newspapers

During the 2½-hour meeting, representatives from the DTSC provided an overview of cleanup to date together with future mitigation plans for the 2,850-acre field lab tucked in the southern hills of Simi Valley.

 

 

Mark Malinowski, a project manager for DTSC, told the crowd of more than 50 the state agency is still evaluating what needs to be done in regard to cleanup.

“I know a lot of questions have come up about why we’ve taken so long, let’s get the dang thing cleaned up. And yeah, we do (need to), but we can’t do that until we have a good investigation to tell us where contaminants are and what has to be cleaned up,” Malinowski said.

Built in 1947, the property was used as a nuclear test site and for research in the development of ballistic missiles, rockets and space shuttle equipment.

Boeing Co. owns 80 percent of SSFL, including Area IV, where a partial nuclear meltdown occurred in 1959, while the remaining 20 percent is owned by the federal government and overseen by NASA.

Cleanup efforts began in 2010, with NASA overseeing remediation in all of Area II and part of Area I and the U.S. Department of Energy and DTSC managing Boeing’s portion.

Under agreements signed by all the stakeholders in 2007 and 2010, all detectable soil contamination was supposed to be cleaned up by 2017, and plans to remediate the groundwater were to be in place. But DTSC has since pushed the date to 2034.

‘Do the right thing’

During the public comments portion of the meeting, 23 speakers spoke in favor of cleanup and urged the DTSC to stop dragging its feet in doing what must be done.

A majority of attendees voiced concerns of contamination they assert has migrated off-site and caused cancer in surrounding communities. Bumstead said she’s mapped more than 50 cases of children living nearby with rare forms of cancer.

“No community should have to count up how many kids they’ve lost to cancer (and) no children should have to suffer and no parent should have to grieve,” Bumstead said. “It’s time to do the right thing and it’s time for DTSC to get on our side and . . . protect (us); that’s what we’re asking of them. We just want to be safe.”

But there is no definitive proof that the contamination left from decades of nuclear testing is the source of cancers and other health issues.

Malinowski said DTSC conducted soil, sediment and surface water tests throughout the site, and even looked into the nearby drains to see exactly how far contamination might have spread.

“(The testing) demonstrates that the Santa Susana Field Lab contamination has not migrated offsite at any levels that would pose a threat to human health,” he told the crowd.

Hal Morgenstern, an epidemiology professor at the University of Michigan, conducted several studies between 1988 and 2002 to see if there was a link between chemical or radioactive contamination at the field lab and deaths caused by leukemia, lymphoma and other cancers.

Results showed people living within a 2-mile radius were at least 60 percent more likely to be diagnosed with certain cancers than those living 5 miles away, but that doesn’t mean the site’s contamination is the cause, Morgenstern previously told the Simi Valley Acorn.

Despite the data he collected, Morgenstern said, there wasn’t enough evidence to identify an explicit link between cancer and field lab contamination. And the results were inconclusive as to whether activities at SSFL specifically affected or will affect cancer incidences, he said.

In the coming months, the DTSC will work to finalize the cleanup plans for the site, which they hope to release in the fall for public input.