From Ojai Valley News, California
Larry Yee of Ojai is the former chair of the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board.
OPINION: V.C. must sue to protect people from toxic Santa Susana Field Lab
By Larry Yee
July 17, 2024
Ninety percent or more of the toxic chemicals and radioactivity left! This is NO cleanup. It is unacceptable. Explain that to the parents of small children living nearby. … How many more children must develop cancers before our elected officials do something?’
Join campaign to clean up site of partial nuclear meltdown.
For over a year, the Ojai Valley News | Ventura County Sun has done an outstanding job of covering the travesty of the Santa Susana Field Lab (SSFL). In the spring Ojai Magazine article “Radioactive rain,” reporter Kit Stolz writes in detail of the 1959 partial nuclear reactor meltdown that still haunts and poses danger to the people of Ventura County.
To mark the 65th anniversary of that disaster, local advocates and community organizations are engaged in a 10-day campaign that started with an Action Assembly on July 13 to demand local elected officials — in particular the Ventura County Board of Supervisors — take action and litigate like they have long resolved and promised to do.
SSFL was a Cold War-era testing facility for rocket engines and nuclear reactors. The thousands of tons of toxic chemicals that were used and dumped there, plus the radioactivity from at least four nuclear accidents, make the SSFL one of the most contaminated sites in the country.
Its 2,850 acres sit on a plateau just south of Simi Valley and west of Chatsworth with more than 700,000 people in surrounding communities living in harm’s way.
The state Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC) is the agency responsible for enforcing the site’s decontamination and cleanup. Boeing, NASA and the Department of Energy are the responsible parties that were required by earlier consent orders to have the cleanup completed by 2017. But because of disputes, denials and delays, nothing was done and the mess remains.
Here we are 65 years later and SSFL has never been remediated, never been cleaned up, despite a long history of pleadings, protests, and petitions to the responsible parties, not to mention the ill effects to previous workers and nearby residents who have contracted cancer or other serious health problems. Currently, there are 80-plus children who have rare pediatric cancers.
DTSC should be ashamed and must be held accountable for allowing Boeing to skate on a full and complete cleanup of the Santa Susana Field Lab. To date, DTSC has proved to be ineffective and negligent in holding the polluters responsible.
Rather, in 2021, the agency conspired with Boeing behind closed doors and secretly developed a new plan.
Travesty
Here’s the travesty: The plan, called the Settlement Agreement, and its Environmental Impact Report (EIR), certified last year by DTSC, totally breaches the earlier Consent Order of 2007 that called for a full cleanup to background. If implemented, Boeing will be able to leave 90% or more of the contamination on site.
Ninety percent or more of the toxic chemicals and radioactivity left! This is NO cleanup. It is unacceptable. Explain that to the parents of small children living nearby.
In 2022, the Ventura County Board of Supervisors unanimously passed a resolution that declared it would sue the state (DTSC) if the final Environmental Impact Report did not support a full cleanup to background. The EIR didn’t come close and is woefully inadequate.
It’s been a year now and the supervisors have not acted. Why the delay? Why do they hesitate? How many more children must develop cancers before our elected officials do something?
I’ve lived in Ventura County for 38 years and am well aware of the divide between west and east county. While the Conejo Grade serves as a physical divide, we also are different culturally, demographically, and economically. Yet, we are all Ventura County residents and we share the same county governance system.
There are times, and this is one, when we all need to think of ourselves as neighbors, as one county, and act together in solidarity for our own shared interests. As the crow flies, Santa Susana is only 30 miles east of us. We breathe the same air, especially when the Santa Anas blow.
Citizens of the Ojai Valley, join with your neighbors in east county and demand the Board of Supervisors take action and litigate now.
Go to parentsagainstssfl.com/action-assembly for more information on what’s happening with our 10-day action campaign and learn how you can get involved to make a difference.
— Larry Yee of Ojai is the former chair of the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board.

