The United States of Waste and Woe: Conserving Toxicity at the Santa Susana Field Lab

Regulatory Capture, Lobbying, Astroturfing, Greenwashing and the Failure to Clean up LA’s Toxic Secret

Discussion with Daniel Hirsch, Denise Duffield and Melissa Bumstead on the history and current contamination of the nuclear experiment and rocket testing site, Santa Susana Field Lab, above Ventura and Los Angeles Counties. We discuss how the responsible parties- NASA, the Department of Energy (DOE) and Boeing have failed to clean up the site, the tactics they have utilized to not do so and the current status of the cleanup. We discuss Boeing’s litigation against cleaning up to background levels, Boeing’s greenwashing campaign to limit its clean up by restricting the land use to a conservation zone and its astroturfing efforts to legitimize its greenwashing campaign. We also discuss the Department of Toxic Substances Control, its failure to hold polluters to account and the wider problems regulatory capture and lobbying present to our democracy.

For More Info: https://thegravity.fm/#/episode/52