On the outskirts of the City of Los Angeles lies a relic of the Cold War. The Santa Susana Field Laboratory(SSFL), a 2850-acre site, where, according to Boeing, almost “every major U.S. space program,” from the first manned outer space flight to the moon landing, owes part of its success to the lab, has become a nuclear wasteland. 

“There was always kind of an urban legend about this rocket testing site that we had,” said Lauren Hammersly, a resident of Simi Valley.

Hammersley grew up in the area, and to her, the Santa Sunana Field Laboratory was just another abandoned government site.

“There weren’t families that were talking about the ill effects of the Santa Susanna field lab. So it was never really something on the forefront of my mind,” she said.

For more than 40 years, the site housed nuclear reactors that left behind heavy metals, radioactive waste, and the beginning of a cleanup project that has lasted decades to complete. 

In 2007, NASA, Boeing, the Department of Energy(DOE), and the California Department of Toxic Substances Control(DTSC) signed the Consent Order for Corrective Action agreement meant to clean up contaminated soil and groundwater.

But many of its critics argued that the agreement did not specify strict cleanup levels. In 2010, DOE and NASA signed the Administrative Order of Consent agreement, which helped define cleanup obligations to natural levels.

But this process was not just done with the help of the state.

“It was a hard-fought battle. Um, but it was a big moment of relief and celebration for the community that they were promised, um, legally promised the full cleanup of, of this toxic site, said Hookon Williams, Executive Director of Committee to Bridge the Gap, a watchdog nuclear policy organization.

But for Hammersley, those changes weren’t enough. In 2013, her two-year-old daughter, Hazel, was diagnosed with stage three neuroblastoma.

“She just kept telling me she had owies and she kept pointing to her back at her stomach,” said Hammersly.

When Hammersly took her daughter to the local hospital, she was transferred to the Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, where doctors found a nerf-size tumor in Hazel’s abdomen. 

You feel like you’re supposed to protect your children. I mean, that’s your job. And, and there’s this thing that’s growing inside of her that I couldn’t protect her from,” said Hammersly.

During that time, she met Melissa Bumstead, founder and co-director of Parents Against Santa Susana Field, and her daughter, Grace, was in cancer treatment.

Bumstead is a resident of West Hill, not far from the Santa Susana field lab. 

“We started meeting other families whose kids live nearby, who also had really rare types of cancer. And I started to become concerned when I kept meeting other families who were just a street over, went to the same park, went to the same grocery store,” said Bumstead.

She started to map out where these families lived, and she began to see a pattern.

“Everyone that we met. We all lived within five miles of the Santa Susanna Field Lab,” she said.

So she decided to organize and create an organization that held Boeing and NASA accountable.

“I didn’t want to fight. I didn’t plan to fight. I planned on forgetting about it. I prefer to be a wallflower, but then I went to Costco one day, and I saw a baby with cancer,” said Bumstead. 

For Bumstead, that was enough. Children around her were being diagnosed with cancer on a large scale. And she is not alone. Denise Duffield, the Associate Director of Physicians for Social Responsibility Los Angeles, an organization that works to protect the public from nuclear weapons, radioactive waste, and contamination, has been working with families that have been affected by the toxins from the SSFL for almost 20 years.

“Now I’m having the second group of moms that I have met at the Children’s Hospital. Once you know what’s on the site, and you know what people are exposed to, particularly women and children. We work closely with the community. We forged deep bonds,” she said.

Duffield stays vigilant. Since clean-up is taking years to finish, her concern is that over time, nuclear waste will seep outside its borders.

“We know what the contaminants are there. And we know that they get off the hill, particularly in windy, rainy, and fire events. So the surest way to prevent exposure from now on for future generations is to remove the contamination,” she said. 

She says the organizations tasked to clean up the site are using time as a way to deflect accountability.

“At the rate some of the cleanup documents will say, natural attenuation is how they want to get rid of it, which means just letting it slide down the hill and break down gradually over time, it means not cleaning up,” she said.

In 2020, NASA unsuccessfully applied to have the entire site on the National Register of Historic Places, which would have the effect of exempting 100% of the site from any cleanup.

In a statement, Boind said, they “secured the future of nearly 2,400 acres as permanent open space habitat to benefit wildlife and the community.” And they plan to transform the Santa Susana Field Laboratory to an open space for animals and plants.”

In 2022, DTSC signed a new deal with Boeing. According to Williams, that deal superseded Boeing’s prior cleanup agreement.

 “(It) weakened cleanup levels that Boeing will use for the SSFL cleanup by hundreds or thousands of times,” he said.

“In other words, letting Boeing leave hundreds to thousands of times, more contamination at the site not cleaned up, where it can continue to migrate into the surrounding community,” he said.

Duffield stays skeptical and has little trust in Boeing and NASA to complete the SSFL clean-up.

“You know, the haters gonna hate, polluters gonna pollute,” she said.

For now, the rest of the community members, local organizations, and watchdog agencies keep working together to let the public know about the effects of the Santa Susana Field Laboratory.