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Students Entice Boeing With Sweets to Clean Up Waste

Catherine Cloutier |
February 8, 2010 | 9:43 p.m. PST

Staff Reporter

Oak Park High School students display a check made out to the Boeing Corporation.
(Catherine Cloutier)

(See editor's note at bottom)

In 1959, the Santa Susana Field Laboratory suffered a partial
radioactive meltdown, leading to the contamination of the neighboring
hills in Canoga Park.  Now, a group of Oak Park tenth-graders are
trying to reverse that contamination with "meltdown morsels," among
other "radioactive" sweets.

The "Teens against Toxins" held a
bake sale on Monday at Oak Park High School. Students planned to hand the proceeds over to a representative of the Boeing Company, which along with NASA owns the Santa Susana Field Laboratory, as an incentive to begin cleanup of contamination at the site.
 
Devyn Gortener, 15, one of the group's founding members, estimated that 40 students participated. 

Fifteen
of those participants, along with several parents and community
members, gathered at the site of the radioactive meltdown. Huddled around an over-sized check, the group
awaited the opportunity to hand over their earnings, a grand total of
$99.31.

Yet, that opportunity never came.  After a half an hour,
Gortener was informed that a Boeing spokesperson was unwilling to be
present on camera and that Boeing was a private company and therefore
could not accept donations.

The protest, or "bake sale
meltdown," was prompted by Boeing's recent civil lawsuit that
questioned the legality of Senate Bill 990.  The 2007 legislation set standards for the cleanup of the Santa Susana Field Laboratory.

  Boeing
argued that the law would prove more harmful than beneficial, citing
inconvenience to residents and local ecosystems.  It called the new
regulations "irrational and arbitrary," according to the Ventura County
Star.

"This just isn't right," said Daniel Hirsch, the president
of the Committee to Bridge the Gap, a non-profit nuclear policy
organization.  "The government contaminated this site, Boeing and its
predecessors contaminated it, and they should clean it up."

Hirsch
said that money impacted Boeing's lawsuit.  "It would be expensive to
clean up the mess they made.  So, what they are doing is externalizing
the costs of doing business," he said.

However, Kamara Sams, a Boeing spokeswoman said in an email that the company challenged the
constitutionality of the law because she said it "singles out the site to meet cleanup requirements that go far beyond what is required to protect citizens elsewhere in California under generally applicable state law."  

Yet, Hirsch and
several of the protesters claimed that Boeing could afford a proper
cleanup. 

The company made $68.218 billion in revenue in 2009, with
$1.312 billion in profits, according to its Summary Financial Report.

Money
was a complaint that Gortener had heard before.  When talking about
cuts to education, she joked with friends that the government should
hold bake sales like schools to raise money. 

"And we said, we should hold a bake sale because [Boeing is] claiming that they don't have enough," Gortener said.

Gortener
was surprised by the participation rate among her classmates.  "I was
expecting a lot less than [$99.31]," she said.  "The point wasn't
really to give them money."

But for the students of Oak Park
High School, this issue is personal. Student Taylor Messina died from
ovarian cancer last year. And she was not the first. After Messina's
death, Gortener began questioning the possibility of a link between the
several cancer cases in her community.

Gortener said the
Chatsworth community has a cluster of Retinoblastoma cases.  This rare
cancer of the eye is fatal, and most of its victims do not live past 15
years old.  

"The only significant clusters have been here and Chernobyl, so one can assume it's because of the toxins," Gortener said.

Gortener
also noted exorbitant rates of thyroid and lung cancer in the affected
communities of Simi Valley, Thousand Oaks, Oak Park, and Chatsworth,
especially among employees of the Santa Susanna Field Laboratory.

"Every
time the wind blows or rain falls, the contamination that's on this
hill wants to move off the hill and down to where these people live,"
Hirsch said.

But the Oak Park High School students will not let
the contamination go without a fight.  The Teens against Toxins are
currently working on a short documentary film about the issue. 

 "They
did offer to set up a tour and have me talk to one of their programming
advisers regarding the cleanup," Gortener said.  "I guess we'll be
back."

"And now we get to donate $99.31 to a cancer research foundation," she added.

Editor's note: This is an updated version that clarifies the contents of Senate Bill 990 and provides comment from a Boeing spokeswoman. The updated version also clarifies the ownership of Santa Susana and Boeing's relationship to the contamination on the site.    

   


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