When the guard rails of democracy come off

Boeing and it’s federal and contractor partners get away with not cleaning up their toxic mess for so many decades through deflection, distraction, cover-up, and through sowing division in the community.

Since the site is owned by Boeing, DOE (Department of Energy), and NASA, the government collusion is a little less surprising, but to see it laid out, is still a stunning revelation in how captured regulatory agencies under this administration really are, It is truly the fox guarding the hen house without any interference. 

Each time the public pressure rises to a level that is uncomfortable, they change the faces of decision-makers. Now, in the climate and culture of corruption that we see in regulatory agencies today, we find that they have increased the push-back to the point of changing the audience by deleting critics from the process. 

Why do ALL pathways for community involvement begin with Alec Uzemeck? 

If he does not determine you to be on the side of denial, keep the contamination, your views will not be welcome in the public sphere. This is demonstrated both at WHNC meetings, as well as the social media groups also controlled by Mr. Uzemeck.

This is a new level of brazen governmental corruption by pressure from polluters to protect them over the people.

 Take the West Hills Neighborhood Council for example. The Environmental Committee is chaired by Alec Uzemeck who also chairs the Community Advisory Group under DTSC. Despite having petitioned against the CAG, Alec soon took it over and deleted any members who wanted cleanup using retaliation, smears, rumors, and good old fashioned bullying. As a real estate investor who lives in Moorpark, there are many who wonder why he is a permanent fixture in the West Hills Neighborhood Council since he doesn’t even live in the City of Los Angeles. Silencing members from online posts, and from participating effectively has left the process without leadership or guardrails. 

Under the direction of DOE’s John Jones, the project director for the nuclear portion of the cleanup where Department of Energy is the responsible party, the CAG created a separate CAG Foundation where a subset of the 15 member group created a 5 person non-profit to receive funds from DOE to do their bidding in the public. This meant “removing conflict” and speaking for the community with “one voice.”  

As the responsible party responsible for the contamination at the site, the fact that Mr. Jones then paid $34,100 to Alec’s CAG Foundation and even helped set up the group as a federal contractor so that monies could be funneled to Alec Uzemeck, Dr. Ron Ziman, Tom Nachtrab, John Luker, and Abe Weitzberg. If the group was a community advisory group under California Health and Safety Code 6.8 (Superfund), then those monies should be transparent and declared but instead, the group was silent about the donation and even denied it to the public for more than a year — until they had to file their taxes. 

Despite claiming that it was some other division of DOE who made this arrangement with the CAG, it was indeed John Jones who was not only funding the CAG, but even shopping for that funding at HQ and pushing the process through. As the polluter, was this appropriate? Considering the lack of transparency, we would have to say NO.

As the relationship with DOE developed, they began directing the work the CAG would do, and that included reviewing previous epidemiology studies to find a different conclusion. For this, Abe Weitzberg, CAG member, Federal contractor, and former worker at the site, was also doubling as epidemiology expert despite not having any such credentials. 

John Jones then directed a complaint about the proposed cleanup, that would be filed with the Department of Energy Office of the Inspector General where claims of fraud and abuse and political interference would be made at the direction of John Jones, DOE. This is beyond conflict of interest, and truly escalates to collusion and conspiracy to misinform the public for the purpose of avoiding state regulation.

“You’ve been deleted.” the voice on the other end of the phone said. What did this mean? My heart was racing. One agency after another, in a matter of weeks, all came up with the same story without basis except that Boeing had made some calls and made sure that they were all on the same page — the Boeing page.

At the federal, state, city, and local levels, I had been deleted from the process as a stakeholder. How was this possible? I mean, this is America and I’ve been involved for almost 20 years. I founded cleanuprocketdyne.org in 2001 and had spent nearly two decades with these people and now I no longer existed. How did this happen? Well, it was carefully planned. 

Certified letters arrived from Boeing, DOE, DTSC, and the City of Los Angeles’ Deputy City Attorney told me that she had instructed her entire division that they would no longer would be accepting correspondence from me. What? 

I’m not entirely sure who is pulling all of the strings, but some of them I can be sure of — Mr. Jones of DOE and his efforts are clear cut and easy to understand. The efforts to collude by the Regional Water Quality Control Board was really the toughest for me to deal with. That was really the last line of defense that I thought was proper, credible, and transparent. Instead, I learned that the Board Staff who I thought was there to protect the people, was really there to protect Boeing from the people. 

How do we hold the biggest corporate giant accountable? Very, very loudly, wth lots of witnesses. 

Current public comment periods open include both DOE and NASA’s Record of Decision for their “Programmatic Agreements” to help to protect cultural resources during the cleanup process. Instead of reaching out to the public, every effort to quietly push forward without interaction with the public seems to be the ‘modus operandi’ for the moment. No announcement or public meetings were held to explain these documents, or assist the public in effectively participating in the process. One DOE meeting was announced, then canceled and changed to a conference call, which was then pushed up one hour, within an hour of the meeting occurrence. As imagined, the participation was very low because deflection works every time.

How deflection-by-design really works:

City of Los Angeles creates Neighborhood Councils which, while they are volunteer and advisory-only, they create their own by-laws which go beyond City policy. In short, this is the city’s way of creating little autonomous little unaccountable countries in each of the 96 Neighborhood Councils that serve 12 districts. And how did they come up with logic that says that running 96 neighborhood councils with the staff of 4 people is efficient, possible, or even responsible? I hope no one said that, because it is a true perfect-storm of corruption and unaccountability to serve personal interests above the people. In the sixth largest economy in the world, this is real problem.

How this harms public understanding of the issues and provides a false choice through fear and anxiety:

By scaring the public about trucks and failing to even mention the harmful contaminants up at the site driving this multi-decade process, eventually results in the public thinking there is nothing to do. Coupled with surrogates in the community who actively vilify anyone wanting cleanup, creating false-flag reasoning that it is a ‘hoax’ allowing the less informed community members to decide that there is nothing to worry about, and literally opt-out of the conversation. Each time that is accomplished, there is less standing in the way of getting away with NO CLEANUP despite legally binding agreements signed over a decade ago that was supposed to result in cleanup completion by June 30th, 2017. Today, since the cleanup still hasn’t started, the responsible parties are actively using these surrogates and retaliatory measures to make people afraid of the cleanup, instead of the remaining plutonium, cesium uranium, and strontium.

How does a person file a complaint?

You can’t. They demand that a complaint be filed within 30 days, and then refuse to consider the complaint or respond to questions about the lack of responsiveness. #ShelterInPlace

In fact, I would hold up the City of Los Angeles to any fascist dictatorship around the globe and I would bet that the City is every bit as corrupt and self-serving as a result of a system of deflection-by-design so people holding “forever” jobs are not accountable and can use their positions to further their personal goals or ambitions. There is no doubt that Boeing is laser-focused on the people who hold those positions for sale and barter.

Should a regulatory oversight agency be doing the job of defending the polluter, or the people? As far as we can see, the job held by each decision-maker in oversight positions, is controlled by funding from Boeing, either directly or indirectly. Here are a few examples at each level of governmental oversight:

1. Request to present at a public Regional Water Board meeting resulted in a counter presentation being done by the polluter, given to Board staff and presented in defense of the polluter. No effort to hear complaint before launching counter smears was done. PRAs reveal direct collusion by Boeing to protect Water Board.

2. Section 106 federal process requires participation. Following an invitation to a followup meeting, the meeting was canceled, moved to conference call, and citizen was banned from all federal DOE sites and spaces when no interaction had occurred since last meeting.

3. Upon stating that “a heads up about concerns” would no longer be given to Boeing, site directory David Dassler issued a letter banning the person from all Boeing sites, and further smeared with Water Board staff in likewise manner, thereby deleting the audience inquiring about the issue for over five years.

4. Regulatory lead, DTSC sent a letter limiting communication to a special correspondence email address thereby eliminating any one person to being accountable to words, promises made. Upon copying this communication to RPs, also eliminated the public process for that person. Copying the responsible parties on such a communication could have only one effect: To allow the responsible parties to also eliminate the public process for critics.

The details:

The FOIAs that provide deep background for the statements made herein.

The PRAs that provide deep background for the statements made herein.

The meeting recordings that provide deep background and verification of specific events, statements, and correspondence that demonstrates collusion.

What is background? Why is the EPA $42 million dollar survey missing from the DTSC website?