Photo Essay: Boeing Rocketdyne Santa Susana Field Lab, Declassified & Decontaminating

In the absence of being able to visit Chernobyl, I'll take my stateside radioactive wastelands where I can get them.

Having first visited the atomic bomb testing site in Nevada, I was ready for an initial exploration of the infamous Rocketdyne site in the Santa Susana Mountains, primarily owned and managed by Boeing, with some parcels operated by the Department of Energy, and even NASA.

It's only recently that everything has become declassified and is allowed to be photographed.



But that place is so contaminated, and in the process of being cleaned up, that you can really only see it by bus.



The ultimate goal is to clean it up enough to turn it over to some land management organization, whether it's the National Parks Service, State Parks, Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, or some other.



But the clean-up has been organized for over 25 years, and parties still disagree as to how clean is clean enough...



...without posing a health risk to the community.



Supposedly it's already safe for hikers and casual visitors.



Many of the contaminated structures were razed in the early 2000s, taking special precautions during demolition, but many still remain.



In fact, they're keeping the most contaminated structures for last, so they have somewhere to store radioactive materials in the meantime. After that, they'll end up at some California hazardous waste landfill (in Buttonwillow or Kettleman Hills).



Headquartered on 56 acres in Canoga Park in the West San Fernando Valley's Simi Hills area...



...the Santa Susana Field Laboratory was used by North American Aviation's Rocketdyne division starting in 1955...



...to test rockets and guided missiles in the wake of World War II. It even once put electrical power out to the commercial grid (namely, the nearby community of Moorpark) thanks to the Sodium Reactor Experiment (SRE), which was first successful in 1957.



The location had to be remote so as not to disturb anybody as it became the country's first liquid-propellant high-thrust rocket engine test facility.



Having shifted from a primarily military mission, Rocketdyne engines became essential to U.S. space exploration: launching our satellites and our first crewed spaceflight, and powering every major U.S. space program.



Many of the tests were viewed by staffers from a underground control center containing a periscope, for their safety.



Its last test was in 2006, over 20 years after energy research was phased out, and four years before the end of laser research.



Now, the site's employees are primarily tasked with environmental cleanup and compliance, as well as storm water management.



One of the few opportunities to get off of the bus is to explore the two remaining ALFA test stands.



ALFA 2 is already gone, but ALFA 1 will probably be preserved...



...and, for the timebeing, ALFA 3 is also decommissioned and declassified.



There used to be huge flames shooting out of these things...



...blackening the surrounding rock formations, which kept the tremendous noise out of the neighboring communities.



Among the chemical compounds spilled around these testing sites was TCE (trichloroethylene)..



...which was used to flush the engines and the fuel systems prior to testing.



In the age of the Space Race...



...every rock engine featured a standard design...



...but each one was treated like a one-off.



Every single rocket engine was tested as though none had ever been tested before.



A lot of astronauts have visited this site over the years, too.



Tours are given by former Rocketdyne engineers...



...and other Boeing employees.



Nothing is quite so top-secret anymore.



But it still all feels very mysterious.



And they don't want you wandering off too far, for fear of injury.



There are a lot of rusty hazards poking out from everywhere.



And although everything has been rendered INACTIVE...



...it still feels like something could blow up on you...



...or that you might step into some seepage.



After all, there are lots of exotic chemicals that have made their way into the groundwater here.



They say that in the spot most contaminated with radiation, you'd have to sit there for two weeks straight before experiencing any negative effects...



...but that is not very comforting.



After all, at least four of the ten nuclear reactors had accidents, and there were numerous fires throughout the field lab in its history. Chemicals used to be illegally disposed of in fire pits and by shooting metal cans that would explode, releasing the contaminants into the air.



In a 1959 incident involving a partial meltdown of the SRE power plant, radioactive gasses were emitted into the atmosphere. Cleanup for that didn't even start until 1975. (The site was demolished and removed in 1999.)



At another test stand in the Coca area...



...it's hard to really understand how groundbreaking the development of propulsion engines was at the time.



But everything that was done here...



...has been used in successful space exploration operations.



Now, of course, it's in a state of beautiful decay, gorgeous ruin...



...like an abandoned oil refinery...



...but eligible for landmark status.



The real test of the success of the cleanup will be the evidence of nature once again thriving on the property.



It was once a successful ranch before being purchased in 1947...



...and before that, a sacred Native American site...



...still full of artifacts, three-color pictographs, and 60+ archaeological sites of Chumash villages, not yet fully documented.

Apparently there's even a pristine cave somewhere.



They say that it continues to be an important wildlife corridor, with a healthy deer population, coyotes, foxes, mountain lions, and even the endangered legless lizard. None of them were visible here.



As part of their public affairs' outreach program, Boeing hosts occasional bus tours, "rocket walks," and nature walks throughout the property to educate the community and, I suppose, gain support for their efforts. One day, hopefully this will be a huge open space for hiking and recreation with a significant history.



In the meantime, you can go hiking now next door at Sage Ranch, and peek through the fence at some of the areas where just nothing grows...



...where the cleanup is active...



...and where no one must go (for now).

Related Posts:
Nevada Test Site: A Matter of National Security
Photo Essay: The Hidden Ruins of the Super-Secret Spy Plane Test Project, Suntan
Photo Essay: Test Pilot Crash Sites in the Mojave Desert
Photo Essay: Crashing & Bleeding on the Trails at Sage Ranch

Life Amongst the Humble

I come from humble beginnings: the youngest in a lower middle-class family, led by a father who had to work two jobs to provide for his two daughters and disabled wife. We were never on welfare like my mom was as a child, but I did suffer the hand-me-downs of my older sister, and I only ever saw my father briefly dinner most days, before he ran to his second job at the Sears in Fayetteville Mall.

I remember sometimes Dad didn't have cash in his pocket to pick up milk on his way home. His credit had gotten so bad at one point, he almost had to file bankruptcy, and so he'd gotten rid of all charge cards. At that time, no cash meant no milk.

I was terrified to ask for money for school field trips or supplies. My cheap winter boots always let the slush soak into my socks.

We were able to live lean for a long time, when fast food restaurants were reserved for special occasions. Our father encouraged us to save our allowance money for something really good, rather than blowing it on candy. We soon followed in his footsteps by obsessively buying 45s and, eventually, cassingles.

We picked up pennies when we saw them on the sidewalk. We prayed for dollar bills.

In my 30s, when I'd reached the age my father was at when he struggled so desperately to support us, I was making good money in my career. I was even making more money than my father, despite his ultimate rise to executive level and well-earned white collar success. I managed to pay off all of the debt I'd accrued by putting myself through college and moving to New York City on my own. It wasn't enough to live very well in New York, but it was enough to live modestly in Manhattan and take cabs to work when it was raining.

I always lived frugally, but I remember at one point being able to not worry about something, saying, "What's the big deal? It's just money." For a short while, I didn't have to check the price tag on everyday items.

It's easy to forget that most Americans do not get to live that way. Life is a struggle. People are expected to be able to live on $10/hour wages and make under $15,000 a year. And no matter how successful you are, or how well you're staying afloat, the rug can be pulled out from you at any time, and God help you if you don't have a safety net.

Today, nearly two months after my last day of work, I found myself at Planned Parenthood – the place for an unemployed, uninsured woman like me to go when in need of a checkup and a prescription refill.

Even with an appointment, the entire visit took three hours. I spent over an hour in the overly air conditioned waiting room, staring at inspirational messages about HOPE and RESPECT that had been painted incorrectly on the wall. (Two words were repeated in one of the sentences, and it was driving me nuts.) I tried not to watch daytime talk shows and entertainment gossip news on the TV, but I couldn't help myself. I ran down the battery on my phone, embarrassed about how everyone else's phone seemed much bigger and much nicer than mine.

I've been humbled before – when I was too big for my own britches and deserved a little knocking down – but these days I am really seeing how the other half lives. And I am not an anthropologist observing it. I am really living it myself.

I wondered what brought the other people: the couples holding hands, the teenagers and their friends, the new parents with their babies, the agitated single females who bounced one leg up and down to make the time pass.

I worried about protests and religiously-fueled violent attacks on the center, like what you hear about at abortion clinics on the news. Maybe those don't happen in LA.

Still, I didn't feel very anonymous. I felt exposed.

When the medical assistant finally brought me in, she pricked my finger for blood and had me pee in a cup, but refused to examine me because I wasn't experiencing any symptoms, and I'd had a normal pap smear a year ago. They wouldn't administer another one to me, despite the fact that I've had problems in the past. Anxiety ensues.

Even when I've let other appointments lapse and have neglected to see other doctors and specialists, I've always managed to see a GYN, every single year.

Except this year.

The good news is, I'm eligible to take a battery of other tests, and continue receiving my prescription, and it's fully covered by the State of California.

The only cost to me? Three hours of a day when I had nothing else to do. And a bit of humility. It's enough to tide me over until I have insurance again.

And in the meantime, my lady parts remain as untouched as they have been for the majority of 2014.

Related Posts:
The View from Above
Plight of the Uninsured
The Forever Now

Dulling the Senses

I’ve always been the kind of person who wanted to feel everything, to fall upon the thorns of life and bleed.

Although as a child, I recoiled from the strong sweet and sour flavors of the German food my mother learned to prepare from my father’s mother, preferring bologna sandwiches on white bread and macaroni and cheese to any number of boiled meats or fermented cabbages that I was being force-fed, in my adult years I’ve grown to want to taste everything: all the pungent, spongy, gamey, bitter, spoiled eats the world has to offer.

Sometimes I can’t get enough of foul odors, because I find their sheer strength addictive.

I’ll try any sexual position or activity once, because I want to know what it feels like. If I don’t like it, I don’t ever have to do it again.

If a television is on in a room, I cannot not watch it. My eyes are dazzled by all of the moving images, even on mute. It could be sports, news, commercials, or some unidentified series or movie, and I cannot take my eyes off of it.

But lately, I’m finding some of the sensory perceptions of the world too much. I can’t stand to be in a room with a television set at any volume because I cannot hear anything else. I sit in cafés, libraries, bars and restaurants with my headphones in playing no music, trying to block out all of the ambient noise of passing traffic, brewing coffee, steaming milk, clinking glasses, clanging silverware, screaming children, barking dogs, gossiping girlfriends, debating dates. Everything is so loud to me, and everyone in LA seems to have something very important to say, all of the time. They all sound like monsters to me, the cries of a thousand screaming Godzillas.

These days, I’ve even stopped singing along to the radio. I can’t stand hearing my own voice, it’s too much. I dread the inevitable day when I don’t want to listen to the radio at all, a sad day, indeed.

I miss the desert, waking up to the coming light of day, and not to the sounds of alarms or neighbors or doors or cars. The doves mourn gentle and low, and their sound blends in with the soft scurrying of the rabbits across the gravel path, a distant trickle of water from the garden being sipped by some thirsty thief, leaving the plants to perish, so it can survive.

Out there, I used to start my day hiking with my headphones, the music playing to pass the time while I struggled to reach some peak or mine. But I soon came to appreciate the silence of separation, letting my ears listen to the hot wind whipping by, and nothing else.

A therapist has discouraged me from self-isolating in the wake of the car accident, but I don’t know if I can handle the world at its full decibel levels right now. Perhaps plugging one’s ears with headphones in public is the ultimate anti-social behavior, but I need to turn down the volume for a little while. The world is too sharp, and I too sensitive. I perceive everything, acutely, deeply. I hear the unsaid. I understand the whispers. I struggle with subtext. My own thoughts are blaring.

So for now, I think I need a break from exterior stimulation. For once, I just want to be left alone. I don’t want to be touched, spoken to, taught, tricked, or fed. I refuse to be needed or noticed. I'm tired of listening, trying to connect. There's no use in talking. I just want to retreat into the soft folds of afternoon nap time.

At least while my brains are still scrambled.

Related Posts:
The Sounds of Silence
Dark Matters