September 29, 2011 – Daily Brief

The number one name in SCV Real Estate is Petzold.

There was also a great story in today’s Signal Business section about the Valley Industry Association, their history and upcoming 30th Anniversary Gala on Friday, Oct. 14 at the Hyatt Valencia. I’d like to give a public shout out to Signal Business Editor Jana Adkins for the great job she did in crafting the story. http://www.the-signal.com/section/24/article/51872/ Sidenote and shameless plug: There’s still tixs available for the Oct. 14 event. The theme is Old World Masquerade, a Black & White Ball, and the evening will have an edge of mystique and allure. Masques optional, but suggested. Contact Kathy Norris at the VIA office if interested. 661.294.8088 or kathy@via.org

My dear friend Berta does not need to “lecture” us over on at rightonscv.com , the haters are on the left. . You are not anti-gay if you oppose DADT. Petz believes that liberals were placed in the audience to gin up a controversy. In any case DADT should have not been repealed by executive order and its repeal was meant to begin the Obama attack on DOMA. Berta fell into a liberal trap in an effort to purgue her guilt.

Too bad the rumor of James Dean’s last meal can never be proved and is probably not true. A couple of years ago we did a documentary where we traveled the route and interviewed all three of the CHP officers involved that day – the one who ticketed him, and two who investigated the fatal crash. It’s the last time that would ever happen; some are now dead. It’s one of our most popular shows and even after all this time it still gets thousands of views each month nation- (world-)wide. You can watch it here: http://www.scvtv.com/html/scvhs021509btv.html

Today’s Daily Brief links to The Signal article on the removal of the “historic property” designation for Newhall Hardware, and mentions a comment on The Signal by a reader that “I see that this will set a precedence to have the Saugus Speedway to be removed as well and for it to be turned into Condos…..Just a thought!” Unfortunately for the owners of the Saugus Speedway/Swap Meet property, their land is so profoundly contaminated with carcinogenic volatile organic chemicals (VOCs) let alone perchlorate, which have flowed off the Whittaker Bermite property onto the soil under the Swap Meet’s pavement, and into the ground water beneath that soil. The concentration of VOCs and perchlorate is so intense, on the colored maps produced by Whittaker’s consultants to show where the toxics have flowed, the Speedway/Swap Meet property is bright red, meaning the worst toxic contamination. Other maps prepared by Whittaker’s consultants concerning the ground water flowing under the Speedway/Swapmeet property only getting worse over the next 10+ years. The California Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC) has an old web page devoted to the Speedway/Swap Meet property, but a key letter from DTSC to the property owner was taken down recently, though the Bermite CAG has copies. One old letter from DTSC to the Speedway/Swap Meet property’s owner said that DTSC would allow the property owner to build “mixed use development” on the property, provided that no homes, condos, apartments, day care centers, nursing homes, or schools were built on the first floor of the buildings, and provided that the property owner signed and recorded a deed restriction to that effect. DTSC’s reasoning behind that requirement is that carcinogenic VOCs up-gas from the soil, into walls of buildings, and the gases cause cancer and other serious illnesses. (I guess DTSC doesn’t care about people who work in stores and offices 40 hours per week, and are exposed to carcinogenic VOC gases.) The owners of the Speedway/Swap Meet property refused to sign such a deed restriction to limit use of their property, and their dealings with Whittaker Corporation as to clean-up of their property are private. After that deed restriction proposal by DTSC was shot down by the Speedway/Swap Meet’s property owner, Whittaker Corporation’s scientific consultants did even more testing of the ground water under the Speedway/Swap Meet property in 2010, and discovered that it is even more contaminated with carcinogenic VOCs, let alone perchlorate, than the previous scientific testing had found. The Speedway/Swap Meet property is also the location of the formerly huge-volume drinking water well called the “Stadium Well” which Santa Clarita Water Company/CLWA shut down several years ago as it became extremely contaminated. When you look in DTSC’s online files, at the also-public 2010 “Feasibility Study” for “OU-7″ describing experimental methods to try to clean-up the VOCs and perchlorate from the ground water aquifers under the Metrolink parking lot (which is part of the Whittaker Bermite property), Bermite Mountain and Speedway/Swap Meet properties, you can see, that among the rather goofy experiments to protect the Speedway/Swap Meet property from further contamination flowing westwards off the Metrolink parking lot. would be the digging of huge trenches, and building of concrete barrier walls, to keep the ground water contained under the Metrolink parking lot (and flowing north into the river) rather than following its natural course onto the Speedway/Swap Meet property. The approach is goofy because the OU7 Feasibility Study shows nothing in terms of subsurface barrier walls built along the Speedway/Swap Meet’s north boundary to protect it from the massive flows of VOC and perchlorate contaminated water off Bermite Mountain. As a result, I would not be too worried that the “historic” Saugus Speedway or the Swap Meet will disappear, in favor of newly built buildings, because those infrequent uses by humans are the safest uses of the property, because people would not be exposed to carcinogenic VOC off-gases flowing into the walls of confined spaces. And for those who like to bash the City staff and consultants, here’s a good one: In the One Valley, One Vision General Plan for the City of Santa Clarita, just this year those geniuses at the City approved the designation of both the unused dirt patches of the Metrolink parking lot, as well as the Speedway/Swap Meet property for the building of “low and very low income housing”….and their plan didn’t even mention that the properties are high contaminated with carcinogenic VOCs. That’s a good move by the City staff, make a plan to gas the poor and elderly who might live in new housing built on those properties. Then there’s the super-ultra toxic and carcinogenic HMX, RDX and other rocket fuel components leaking into the drinking water aquifer from the “Old Highway Well” on the far eastern edge of the Metrolink parking lot property, past the old farm house. That’s another essay to write, but for now take comfort that DTSC has the Old Highway Well surrounded with “monitoring wells” and as of 2008 data, Whittaker’s scientific consultants tell us that the ultra-toxics had “only” spread in a 150′ radius from the well. Of course, it’s now 2011, and that radius is probably bigger, perhaps even touching the Santa Clara River’s, where CLWA’s Dan Masnada says the Alluvial Drinking Water Aquifer follows the river. Of course, CLWA is not testing for those super-toxic rocket fuel chemicals from the Old Highway Well when it sends you your drinking water. If you want to look at the OU7 Feasibility Study, with its flashy colored maps showing where the VOC and perchlorate pollution had spread off the Bermite property by 2008, you can fight with DTSC’s website at: http://www.envirostor.dtsc.ca.gov/public/ Type in Santa Clarita under the “City” blank and that click on the Get Report button. You’ll see Whittaker Bermite Facility at the bottom of the page. Click on the brown [Report] link and try to get it to open. It usually won’t open, because of a variety of highly disputed causes. Assuming you get in, go to the Activities tab and read the documents to your heart’s content. I’d really love to get some local website to post direct links to the pdfs of the maps from the OU7 Feasibility Study, because they show, using 2008 data, where carcinogenic VOCs and perchlorate have flowed off the Whittaker Bermite property, and onto other people’s property, causing drinking water wells to be closed. The Signal ran its usually careful story showing some of the drinking water wells closed because of the flow of perchlorate off the Whittaker Bermite property, but they chose not to talk about the carcinogenic VOCs in the drinking water flowing off Bermite Mountain, and not to copy the public-domain flashy colored maps from the DTSC-approved Feasibility Study. See: http://www.the-signal.com/section/36/article/50543/ Also see: http://www.the-signal.com/section/36/article/49405/

CDC Atlanta data clearly shows the highest incidence of HIV/AIDS is among gay and bisexual men. http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/topics/surveillance/incidence.htm My church gave upwards of $5,000 last month to the the Gay and Lesbian Center of Los Angeles for AIDS relief. Well north of $15,000 since Prop 8. We can show care and compassion for the suffering while not compromising our stand on homosexuality. What was compromised in the DADT is free speech and religious freedoms guaranteed in the First Amendment.

For those of you who doubt Petz veracity here is a link to the centers 2009 annual report. The Sanctuary is listed on P. 10 as a Platinum Donor. So before you throw stones my way….look in the mirror. http://www.lagaycenter.org/site/DocServer/AnnualReport_09_Final.pdf?docID=10442&AddInterest=1081

It’s sad that the recent hateful comments of some of our democrat representatives were not worthy of denouncing by the SCV’s premier liberal Blogger.