Contamination documents

Dear Editor:I read with great interest the Los Angeles Times article and your follow-up story concerning the Downey Studios contamination issue. I would caution the Alcalde and his minions to refrain from idiotic statements such as "there's probably not a site in America that has been more thoroughly evaluated from an environmental point of view." There are hundreds of thousands of sites in the United States that are just as thoroughly investigated and remediated, just as there are hundreds of thousands of sites that have not been investigated yet. I checked the Geotracker database (administered by the Water Resources Control Board) for the site in question and found the usual monitoring reports, letters from regulators and laboratory results. But just as important, I did not find any of the initial soil and groundwater investigations posted. As such, I can not say in good conscience that the site is the most thoroughly documented or, for that matter, even completely documented. The fact of the matter is people are getting sick. This in itself should warrant further investigation, not a bunch of blowhards passing gas and blustering nonsense. I say to the mayor: produce the documents and make them available to the public. But even more important, the site has also been developed into a park and hospital. I, for one, will avoid visiting these sites and I will not allow my kids to play at the park until a full accounting is made to the citizens of Downey. - Thomas D. Smith, Downey

********** Published: August 14, 2009 - Volume 8 - Issue 17