I heard a KNBC TV reporter say on Take Two today that Brandeis Bardin has radiation contamination, that he went to the Jewish camp, that he recently contacted the Jewish institution, they said they had tested everything and it was safe, the reporter asked to see the tests and the camp refused. Thousands of Jewish kids over decades went to a camp with severe contamination.
From the Los Angeles Times in 1997:
SIMI VALLEY — On the eve of a trial that would have questioned whether ground-water pollution resulted from decades of radioactive and chemical testing at Rocketdyne’s Santa Susana Field Lab, the aerospace firm Thursday quietly settled a lawsuit filed against it by the Brandeis-Bardin Institute.
Brandeis-Bardin had accused Rocketdyne of letting its research into rocket engines and nuclear reactors foul the ground water, which ran downhill to the neighboring Jewish studies center in eastern Simi Valley, the suit said.
Jury selection in U.S. District Court was to have begun Tuesday before Judge Audrey B. Collins.
But the institute and the aerospace contractor resolved their differences first in a secret agreement Thursday, said Helen Zukin, attorney for Brandeis-Bardin.
“It was a fair and reasonable settlement from the Brandeis-Bardin Institute’s perspective,” Zukin said. “It is subject to a confidentiality agreement. I can give you no details.”
Rocketdyne spokeswoman Lorie Circle said Thursday evening that she was unable to confirm the suit had been settled.
Brandeis-Bardin filed the federal lawsuit just before Christmas 1995, alleging decades of nuclear and chemical research at Rocketdyne’s field lab had polluted the institute’s water and land.
Despite heavy work on Rocketdyne’s part to clean up the toxic legacy of its work, studies found that chemical and radiological contaminants had seeped onto the Brandeis-Bardin property, the suit said.
Low-level traces of radioactive material and carcinogenic solvents such as trichloroethylene were found near the border separating Rocketdyne from Brandeis-Bardin, far from the main activities of the institute, the studies said.
Yet while no one at Brandeis-Bardin ever uses the ground water, the suit alleged the contamination would lower the value of the property–should the institute ever decide to sell any of its 3,100 acres.
The institute moved from New York to its current site southeast of the field lab in 1947–about the same time rocket research began on “the Hill,” and several years before Atomic Energy Commission scientists began experimenting with nuclear reactors at Rocketdyne.
Rocketdyne designed, built and tested nearly every engine used in the U.S. space race against the former Soviet Union, and still tests satellite-carrying rockets.
The firm also worked with the energy commission from the late 1940s to the early 1960s, operating 16 experimental nuclear reactors–one of which suffered a partial meltdown.
Boeing bought the 2,668-acre field lab from Rocketdyne’s parent company Rockwell International in December, agreeing to assume nearly all the responsibility and legal liability for cleaning up the lab site.
But Boeing has left its Rocketdyne division alone to face any liability for the July 1994 blast that killed two physicists who were illegally blowing up rocket fuel chemicals to get rid of them.
Rockwell pleaded guilty last spring to felony charges of illegal waste disposal and paid a record $6.5-million federal fine in the deaths of physicists Otto K. Heiney and Larry A. Pugh.
And federal prosecutors are preparing to file criminal charges against other Rocketdyne workers in the men’s deaths, sources have told The Times.
