NBC investigation reopens contamination question at SoCal Jewish camp

For years, Victoria Tashman didn’t think much of the sonic booms coming from the Santa Susana Field Lab, just uphill from a storied Jewish retreat and campus not far from her Woodland Hills home.

“It was just part of growing up,” she said.

But in 2004, when she was diagnosed with breast cancer, her father mentioned it might be related to the site in Simi Valley. And when she caught wind of a yearlong KNBC investigation into the potential contamination, which aired this week, she forwarded it to her whole family.

Now, she’s wondering if her mother’s and mother-in-law’s cancers were also related to the site.

[ESHMAN: Brandeis Bardin needs to be transparent about contamination]

The three-part investigation unearthed a trove of documents indicating that Brandeis-Bardin Institute (BBI), which includes Camp Alonim, was scarred by nuclear and other contamination from the neighboring facility, now owned by Boeing.

“People were exposed; there’s no doubt about that,” Yoram Cohen, a UCLA researcher who studied the site, said during the Nov. 9 broadcast.

The investigation found that rocket tests and “burn pits” for nuclear waste, among other potential contaminants, may have resulted in toxic exposure for the camp. American Jewish University (AJU), which since 2007 has owned and operated the campus, has denied to both KNBC and the Jewish Journal that the thousands of children who attended the camp have been in danger from contamination.

A Nov. 10 email message from AJU president Robert Wexler sent to families affiliated with the campus called the KNBC story “deeply flawed and entirely misleading.”

But an internal report initiated by Brandeis in 1997, obtained by KNBC, indicated that the “property is contaminated, at both the surface and subsurface, with radiological and chemical contaminants.”

“I was reassured over and over the land was safe and that there was no need for me to see any of the materials,” Rabbi Lee Bycel, who directed the Institute from 2000 to 2003, told the Journal. Bycel said in the KNBC report that he would not have taken the job at BBI if he had known the extent of the contamination.

Located just south of the 118 Freeway, the Brandeis-Bardin Campus encompasses nearly 3,000 acres of mess halls, bunks, prayer centers and recreation facilities, including horse stables, a swimming pool and tennis courts. Its website states that it is the “largest parcel of land owned by a Jewish institution outside the State of Israel.”

The site’s perils came to the fore in 1959 when a nuclear reactor experienced a partial meltdown. Workers told the network they were instructed to open the exhaust stacks, allowing radioactive gas to waft toward surrounding areas.

For years afterward, Rocketdyne, the company that operated the site at the time, conducted rocket tests that emitted known contaminants.

In 1997, Brandeis reached a confidential $3.2 million settlement with Boeing, obtained by KNBC, with the aerospace company agreeing to buy a portion of the adjacent land in exchange for Brandeis waiving its right to all future lawsuits over the contamination. AJU did not confirm whether the details of the settlement, as reported by KNBC, are accurate.  

The Jewish Journal attempted an investigation into the contamination three years ago, but according to Journal editor-in-chief  and publisher Rob Eshman, was unable to find enough evidence to produce a satisfactory story (see Eshman’s column, p. 6).  

“We simply lacked the resources and expertise to pursue the story,” Eshman said. “KNBC fielded a team of Emmy-winning reporters and scientific consultants over a period of one year, and Joel Grover and his team are to be commended.” 

AJU continues to assert that the facility is safe and that it has done regular testing of the property.  

Throughout the Journal’s 2012 investigation, AJU refused to release results of tests it said prove that fact. After repeated requests by KNBC, AJU released a number of test results, but not all. 

Both AJU and KNBC are posting numerous documents related to the Brandeis-Bardin property on their websites.

“Based on an exhaustive records review and the conclusion of scientific experts, we found no cause for concern about the health and safety of the campers, staff or other visitors — past or present,” the AJU wrote in a Nov. 5 letter to KNBC. “Current testing confirms the safety of our property.”

But some members of the Brandeis-Bardin community aren’t so sure.

“Everyone is just guessing at this point,” said Robert Cohen, who spent several summers on the campus in the late 1960s and sent his three sons to Camp Alonim. “The only way to know for sure is to do an epidemiological study of the health of all the campers.”

At the age of 21, Cohen’s son Daniel was diagnosed with thyroid cancer. Robert Cohen believes the cancer was a result of his son’s romps around the Alonim campus, where the boys’ bunks are just downhill from the field lab.

“Whenever there were heavy rains, the creek became a river, and mud from the hillside would be washed down,” the elder Cohen told the Jewish Journal. “I’m not a scientist, but that always bothered me.”

Bycel, BBI’s former director, stressed that he has the campus’ best interests at heart when he asks for a full accounting of the contamination.

“That’s what Brandeis taught us to do; that’s being loyal to the Jewish community,” he said. “You only question when you care.”

——-

For the Record (11/10/2015): Victoria Tashman's childhood home was corrected to reflect that she lived in Woodland Hills, not Simi Valley.  And her mother-in-law had cancer, not her brother-in-law.