Demolition continues for field lab buildings




HILLS HAVE EYES—When operating, this was the sodium pump test facility at Area IV of the Department of Energy’s Santa Susana Field Laboratory. It will soon be demolished as the site undergoes rehabilitation. Acorn file photo

HILLS HAVE EYES—When operating, this was the sodium pump test facility at Area IV of the Department of Energy’s Santa Susana Field Laboratory. It will soon be demolished as the site undergoes rehabilitation. Acorn file photo

Peeking up over the hills near Simi Valley, not far from the northern reaches of Oak Park, the remaining buildings from the decades-old Santa Susana Field Lab offer a glimpse back in time to the early days of America’s Atomic Age.

The buildings act like a time machine for Brian Sujata, sparking memories of when he began working at the site in the early 1990s. They take him back further still, to a time before the United States had put a man on the moon.

But this glimpse into the past will soon be no more.

Most of the eight buildings that remained in Area IV have been taken down, with the rest to be demolished in the coming days.

“There’s a lot of history there, but now they’ve become a relic of a bygone era,” Sujata said. “The area itself is actually verdant with wildlife and plants, and I’m completely comfortable seeing it become open space.”

Other residents have been lobbying for years to get the buildings torn down. A partial nuclear meltdown occurred at the rocket engine testing site in 1959, and many consider it an ongoing toxic threat to public health.

The 2,850-acre field lab began operating in the 1940s in the hills south of Simi Valley. It’s largely owned by Boeing Co., which controls 80% of the site, including Area IV where the partial meltdown occurred. The remaining 20% is overseen by NASA on behalf of the federal government.

The U.S. Department of Energy is responsible for managing cleanup in Area IV, which includes razing the remaining buildings still standing on that portion of the property.

Among those buildings is the sodium pump test facility, which is slated to come down this month. The structure is one that Sujata, a Thousand Oaks resident, always notices as he drives into Simi Valley.

Sujata worked at the field lab from 1991 to 2007 on environmental projects, cleanups, closures and investigations. From 2002 to 2007, he was the project manager for the DOE’s former Energy Technology and Engineering Center, which served as a research facility during the Cold War.

At that time, Sujata said they’d already begun demolishing buildings, but it’s taken 14 years to finish the task. The slowdown, he believes, is because of politics surrounding the lab site.

Once politics got involved, the narrative became bogged down by conspiracy theories rather than focusing on what scientists found in numerous tests over the years, he said.

“It just is what it is, and that’s that (SSFL) isn’t harming anyone on or offsite,” Sujata said. “Still, the buildings needed to come down, so I’m glad that’s happening. Let’s get it done and argue about the cleanup standards later.”

Per the 2010 agreement, which governs cleanup standards at SSFL, the site must be cleaned to background, meaning the land must be returned to the state it was in before anything was built.

This agreement was signed by NASA, the DOE and the California Department of Toxic Substance Control, which has the final say on how the remediation must be done. The final environmental impact report on the site is expected sometime in 2022.

In the meantime, groundwater cleanup is ongoing at the site; the DOE is continuing to raze the remaining structures, and NASA is working on taking down the rest of the Bravo test stand, DTSC spokesperson Russ Edmondson said.

The sodium pump test facility and any remaining DOE buildings are expected to be fully demolished by November, he said.

“After the demolition of the last two buildings is complete, there will be no DOE buildings left at SSFL. However, the building slabs for several buildings will remain until soil cleanup begins,” Edmondson said.

He added that soil mitigation is expected to be finished in 2034.

As the DOE works to remove the remaining Boeing buildings, NASA continues to move forward with plans to tear down all of its remaining facilities, except for the Alfa test stand and a control building, which will remain as historical structures, Edmondson said.

Nora Frost moved to Simi in December after she got married to help care for her mother-in-law, who’s battling two different types of leukemia.

It was then she heard residents say that local cancer cases might be linked to contamination from the field lab, Frost said. When she started looking into those claims, the amount of information was both overwhelming and terrifying, she said.

“It’s a no-brainer that if something hazardous has gone uncleaned and cancer cases keep going up, then there’s got to be some correlation. I would just love to see the site cleaned up 100% so we can take away any excuse for someone to say that new cancer cases are because of the field lab. It’s just embarrassing and frustrating that that’s happening,” Frost said

Sujata, who has two science degrees, has poured over vast amounts of data and personally done investigations at the site.

He said he’s come to the conclusion that the contamination being touted at the site isn’t really there—at least not to the extent activists claim it is.

The agencies responsible for the site all say that the field Iab is not causing harm to the surrounding communities. That view has been proven by numerous in-depth tests, they say.

“A lot of people call (SSFL) America’s Chernobyl and, frankly, if I believed everything I read, I’d think it’s bad, too,” Sujata said. “But I know that it’s not because I worked up there.”

Sujata said he believes that cleaning the area to background levels would do more harm than good.

“I think someone has to stand up to protect nature because it would be a tragedy if they followed through and destroyed everything,” he said.

Documenting the fight: ‘Our children are sick’

While cleanup remains ongoing at the Santa Susana Field Lab, not everyone is happy with the level of responsibility claimed by the agencies overseeing the site.

Many activists have called for NASA, Boeing and the U.S. Department of Energy to be held to higher standards, and remain committed to cleaning the site to background levels.

Boeing entered an agreement with the North American Land Trust in April 2017 to designate its portion of the land, about 2,400 acres, as open space.

That agreement was one of many points of contention over the years between the agencies responsible for site cleanup and activists demanding the land be returned to what it was prior to the field lab’s existence.

West Hills resident Melissa Bumstead, founder of Parents Against Santa Susana Field Lab, is one of the lobbyists leading the charge for stricter cleanup. She got involved after her daughter, Grace, was diagnosed with leukemia in 2014.

Bumstead is featured in director Nicholas Mihm’s documentary“In the Dark of the Valley,” which highlights the stories of local moms like herself who believe contamination at the lab site has caused dozens of cancer cases over the years. The film’s tagline sums up their feelings: “Cancer moves faster than bureaucracy.”

The documentary has been playing at film festivals across the country since March. Last month, it was named best documentary at the Phoenix Film Festival in Arizona and also took home awards for best documentary, best directing and best editing at the Angeles Documentaries festival. On Nov. 5, it’s slated for screening at the 22nd annual Ojai Film Festival.

Bumstead attended the Phoenix Film Festival screening and took part in a Q&A.

“(This film) showed (people) the children who are harmed by greedy corporations and apathetic government agencies. Their hearts were touched,” Bumstead said in an update about the film on change.org. “That’s the power of this film. It’s creating real momentum.”

At an Aug. 30 rally in Sacramento, lobbyists from more than 20 other environmental groups joined Bumstead in demanding complete cleanup.

The Department of Toxic Substances Control and the California Environmental Protection Agency“have long been . . . in bed with the polluters, corporate developers and lobbyists whose interests are prioritized over the health of those living in and near . . . contaminated sites,” she said in a statement about the rally.

“Meanwhile, communities like mine have been exposed to dangerous contamination since the 1940s. Our children are sick.”

This story was updated at 1 p.m. on Sept. 30, 2021.