I have some bad news about the Santa Susana Field Lab, but I’m still “dancing through the fire, 'cause I am a champion, and you're gonna hear me roar.” (Lyrics from Katy Perry’s song Roar). 

Because that’s the type of person I am, and I hope you are too. As bad as things get, we keep going and we dance while we do. 

The bad news about NASA, which is even worse than NASA’s bad news from last week, is that they finalized their Environmental Impact Statement (EIS). The process is called the “Record of Decision,” or ROD. And in the finalization they selected Option C of the cleanup options they proposed, leaving over  80% of their portion of the Field Lab contaminated. 

You can see the difference about Option A, which is the 2010 cleanup NASA agreed to with the State of California, and it shows lots of purple. Purple shows how much contamination they’ll remediate. But NASA is breaking it’s legal agreements in their ROD. You'll notice very little purple because NASA doesn't intend to remediate very much at all in Option C.

The crazy thing is, NASA has said that there would be no difference to human health if they left all the contamination or if they removed all the contamination. NASA has toxic and dangerous chemical and metal contamination on the SSFL like the highly-carcinogenic TCE, benzene, and perchlorate, lead, arsenic, mercury, and more. Many of these can cause serious health issues after a single, short-term exposure. 

How could leaving all the contamination be as safe as removing all the contamination? 

Especially if they give the land to the Native Americans who will be invited to come onsite and engage in their religious and cultural activities? They could be directly exposed to contamination!

But NASA seems to value crazy. They are justifying the smaller cleanup by arguing that they discovered the site is much more contaminated than they realized. They say the cleanup is cost-prohibitive.

I say cancer is cost prohibitive. You might remember that my daughter is a two-time cancer survivor and I’d estimate that the treatment that saved her life cost as much as $2,000,000. And she’s just one of fifty other kids I know in the area who have needed extreme medical intervention to try to save their lives.  

NASA put a price on our kids' lives saying the full cleanup is "cost prohibitive." But for our community, this isn’t about money. It’s about our children.

To me, a child’s life is worth more than all the gold in the world. And NASA’s cleanup of the Santa Susana Field Lab is certainly less expensive than the $2.4 billion of dollars NASA wants to spend trying to get to Mars. 

It’s terrifying watching NASA be so flippant with the health of our community and the lives of our children. But I’m not giving up. I’m not even dragging my feet. I’m dancing. Because that’s what my daughter did during her cancer treatment. Her theme song through treatment was Roar:

I got the eye of the tiger, a fighter
Dancing through the fire
'Cause I am a champion, and you're gonna hear me roar
Louder, louder than a lion
'Cause I am a champion, and you're gonna hear me roar!

I hope you’ll keep getting up with us, fighting for the cleanup of the Santa Susana Field Lab. NASA better get ready ‘cause we’ve had enough. We're going to be dancing through the fire.

P.S. You might also like reading this article from the Los Angeles Daily News that goes a little more into detail about NASA's ROD.