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Life & Times Transcript

12/19/07

Val Zavala>> Tonight on Life and Times --

Dogs play there, children go to school there, but what's underneath this park in Brentwood?

Michael Collins>> I think what we at EnviroReporter.com brought to the table, we're able to push this story along so the community would have to face that there is a nuclear dump in Brentwood.

Val Zavala>> And then, you could call it buried treasure. The hundreds of artworks in the stations of the Los Angeles subway.

It's all straight ahead on tonight's Life and Times.

Announcer>> Life and Times is made possible through the generous support of the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of medicine, health, science and education.

And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg.

Val Zavala>> Our story today takes us to the Veterans Administration, the large facility we're all familiar with in Brentwood. The issue? Biomedical nuclear waste that was buried here more than fifty years ago. Hypodermic needles and even the cremated remains of radioactive lab animals. How dangerous is it? That's the question Hena Cuevas set out to answer.

Hena Cuevas>> Barrington Park is one of the best places in Brentwood for dogs to run free. It's nice and peaceful above ground, but there are questions about what's buried deep under the grass and mulch. For twenty years, this area was used as a dumping ground for radioactive waste.

Michael Collins>> There were experiments on animals, humans, and I looked at what they did and that way I could find out for sure what it was that went into this dump.

Hena Cuevas>> Michael Collins is a freelance environmental reporter. He first heard about the dump six years ago when an environmental group brought it to his attention.

Michael Collins>> They had tried a quarter century ago to bring the facts of the matter to the public's attention and did. Unfortunately, for them, they failed to convince government leaders and the community enough that there was enough of a danger to have the area properly characterized before the building of the park that we're at now.

Hena Cuevas>> So Collins decided to look into it. He found that, from 1948 to 1968, the Department of Veterans Affairs, together with UCLA, conducted radiation experiments on animals and humans.

Michael Collins>> That if you were going to do experiments like that that were somewhat reckless, you might be a little reckless in your disposal of the wastes. Indeed, here I was able to discover that wastes were dumped in unlined trenches, different types of radioactive waste that shouldn't be mixed together were mixed together.

Hena Cuevas>> The waste included hypodermic needles and the remains from cremated lab animals that had been radiated. Collins began a series of newspaper articles and posted most of the information on his website, EnviroReporter.com.

Michael Collins>> What we at EnviroReporter.com brought to the table was full evidence of what's here, maps of what's here, photographs of what's here and, in conjunction with L.A. CityBeat, we were able to push this story along so the community would have to face that there is a nuclear dump in Brentwood.

Hena Cuevas>> The dump straddles three locations, the Veterans Affairs, or VA, the dog park, and a private school called Brentwood School. It, together with the parks, leased the land from the VA. But to Collins' surprise, the community wasn't receptive to his revelations.

Michael Collins>> I can only speculate as to why. People not wanting Brentwood to be associated with having a nuclear dump, a neighboring Brentwood school getting tagged with the moniker of "Nuke 'Em High". Any of these kinds of things might be a reason that they were reticent at that time to look at this issue more seriously.

Hena Cuevas>> But at Brentwood School, someone was paying attention. The school is exclusive and private. It has only a thousand students in grades K through twelve. Governor Schwarzenegger's children go there. In May 2006, the school's director, Michael Pratt, was given one of Collins' articles.

Michael Pratt>> But we had known before that there were burial sites on the VA property including several solid waste burial sites on our campus. When the excavation for the fields had been initially done, any debris that was uncovered was removed. No radioactive materials were found at that time.

Hena Cuevas>> He's referring to the athletic fields located on campus. The Brentwood School agreed to share the fields with the VA when the students weren't using them.

Michael Pratt>> We were aware that there had been radioactive medical waste materials buried on VA property, but not on the property that we share. We had been assured that no radioactive materials had ever been buried on the property that we share with the VA.

Hena Cuevas>> Nevertheless, last year the school decided to conduct its own test. A new aquatic center was being built near the dump site and, since the area was being dug up, it was the perfect opportunity to test the soil for nuclear waste and other contaminants. Those tests came back clean.

Michael Pratt>> It demonstrated that no radioactive materials had ever been buried anywhere on the lands that we share with the Veterans Administration.

Hena Cuevas>> But Collins isn't so sure. He says, based on historic maps, the school tested in the wrong areas.

Michael Collins>> When you take one surface sample per acre randomly chosen, when you bore in places that have nothing to do with where we think the radioactive contamination is and the reason you do it is because you're building a pool and the land is open and easy to bore into, that's not sound science.

Hena Cuevas>> But that's not the only testing that's been done.

Ralph Tillman>> So it's this entire area, if you will, that is the area being questioned.

Hena Cuevas>> Ralph Tillman is with the VA, the government department that owns the land. The VA did its own test of the area in 2005.

Ralph Tillman>> All the independent studies that have been performed have drawn the same conclusion that there are no environmental safety or health concerns on the properties in question.

Hena Cuevas>> That's true, with one exception. The first draft of the VA study did say they found traces of radioactive medical waste under the school's athletic fields. But Tillman says that was a preliminary report that contained inaccurate information and should never have been released.

Ralph Tillman>> There was a draft report which was not finalized, had not been reviewed nor edited, and that was posted on an elected official's website. That had misinformation. What we've been doing ever since is trying to put out the correct information.

Hena Cuevas>> So as part of that effort, the VA conducted yet another round of testing. Phase One of the testing took place a year ago last December, taking a look at the more than two decades of Cold War dumping that took place on this site. What that study found was that there were traces of contaminants surrounding the site and recommended that some additional testing take place.

So a million dollars has been set aside for testing to begin in the spring. These red flags are from that Phase One investigation and indicate hot spots, places where toxic waste was detected. Tillman says that Phase Two will look into that.

Ralph Tillman>> It's just more detailed. They will do subsurface exploration, soils borings at a number of different sites, so it's just a more extensive study than Phase One.

Hena Cuevas>> But Collins doesn't understand why the VA doesn't simply go to the areas where they know the waste was buried.

Michael Collins>> We have maps that the workers have created from back in the day that say, "This is where we dumped this stuff." What we would recommend and what would be cheaper and what would cut to the chase is to begin to excavate it.

Ralph Tillman>> From our perspective, there's nothing to get out. In other words, it's a safe environment. The land is safe, the surface is safe. So unless the test results would cause that recommendation for us to do soil remediation, then that would be a proper action. But again, until we get the results, we don't know.

Hena Cuevas>> You've been conducting this investigation for the past six years. How frustrating has it been not receiving a positive response from the VA, from the school and even the residents themselves?

Michael Collins>> It's been very frustrating. While it may be frustrating, the fact is, we're doing the kind of reporting that will hopefully end up benefiting the public good.

Hena Cuevas>> For the time being, the site remains closed and new metal signs warn people to stay away. Collins hopes Phase Two will answer his remaining questions, but he's vowed to continue following the story until he's assured that the land used by kids, the people of Brentwood and their dogs is hazard-free. I'm Hena Cuevas for Life and Times.

Val Zavala>> So how do you think this waste should be handled? You can post your comments. Just go to kcet.org/lifeandtimes/
blog.

Announcer>> Kcet.org is the place to look for the very latest on Life and Times. You'll find previews of upcoming stories, plus transcripts and audio of past episodes and links to some of our most interesting features. Just go to kcet.org, scroll down the page and click on "Life and Times".

Val Zavala>> It's a fifty thousand dollar prize that has yet to be claimed. Fifty thousand dollars to any psychic who can actually do what he or she claims they can do. The prize is offered by the Center for Inquiry, a Hollywood-based organization that is bringing skepticism and rationality to a world that's easily fooled.

On Hollywood Boulevard in Los Feliz, there's a building with an interesting name on it, the Center for Inquiry. Inside are some inquiring minds, mostly volunteers who are dedicated to debunking psychic claims.

Jim Underdown>> This includes psychic ability, being able to levitate, being able to move things with your hands, being able to see into far places, all kinds of different things.

Val Zavala>> Jim Underdown is its Executive Director. One of the things they do is put professed psychics to the test, if they're willing. As an incentive, they've offered a fifty thousand dollar prize, but how many have actually taken the challenge?

Jim Underdown>> It's only a handful who have shown up and done the actual test. Under ten, I would say.

Val Zavala>> Applicants must fill out an application stating their alleged powers, then sign off on a carefully designed test of their paranormal skills.

Jim Underdown>> A guy from Australia flew to the United States and said that he could identify any number of different materials without seeing it. Is it wood? Is it glass? Is it metal? Is it stone? We were in the car on the way to the test working out the last bits of whose job would be what, on the way to the test. I got a call on my cell phone and the guy said, "I can't do it. I tried it last night. I wasn't successful. I don't want to put myself through this."

Val Zavala>> But in 2005, one person was willing. He claimed that he was telepathic, that he could concentrate on a word and send it to a receiver. He was on the second floor and the receiver was on the first. He concentrated on twenty randomly chosen words one at a time. The receiver wrote them down. At the end of the test, they compared the two lists.

>> "And the last word sent is "vanilla".

>> "And the last word received was "night", n-i-g-h-t."

Val Zavala>> The young man was sincere in his belief that he was telepathic, but disappointed to find out that he wasn't.

Jim Underdown>> You know, we always warn them to test themselves before they get here. Few people take that advice.

Val Zavala>> The group has debunked spoon-bending, fortune-telling and UFOs. They've taken flying saucer photographs of their own, this one spotted over Hollywood, Lake Michigan, above downtown Los Angeles and over the Grand Canyon.

Owen Hammer>> It is the plastic lid to a Mr. Coffee coffeepot.

Val Zavala>> Owen Hammer is with the subgroup of the Center for Inquiry called the Independent Investigations Group.

Owen Hammer>> It's hung by a telescopic pole that's used by painters so you can get a long distance on it. When you take a picture of it, instead of looking like a small object that's close to the camera, it looks like a big object that's very far away from the camera.

Val Zavala>> But Owen's main target are so-called Psychic Detectives and the television shows that showcase them. He says, if you look at police reports and court records, there's not a single case where a psychic has solved a crime.

Owen Hammer>> What they do is, they call the police, they give them information. The police have to take any phone call they get if there's an ongoing investigation. So the police talk to them and then they say on their website or in their press release, "Hey, I worked on this case."

A psychic will go to the family and say, "I see a vision of your. . ." and they'll say, "Oh, he was very loving", etc., etc., immediately attract the family. Then the family is with the psychic. The psychic says to the family, "The police won't listen to me. Tell the police to listen to me."

So the family goes right to the police. The police aren't going to ignore the wishes of a grieving family, so they take five minutes, talk to the psychic, write down what they say, probably just doodling or whatever. Then the psychic says, "I worked with the police on so and so case."

Val Zavala>> Remember the Elizabeth Smart case? The fourteen year old girl from Salt Lake City who was abducted in 2002? She was found nine months later alive and healthy.

Owen Hammer>> They set up a 1-800 number. About half of the phone calls were either from psychics or people with psychic visions of some sort. It ran the whole gamut from she's alive, she's dead, she's north, she's south, and they've confirmed they got no useful information from them.

Jim Underdown>> "Once in a while, we get someone who has made a claim and is willing to be tested."

Val Zavala>> But the Center's most elaborate project didn't test a psychic at all. It tested its own members, skeptics who were invited to watch what they thought was a psychic going for the fifty thousand dollar prize.

Here's the setup. This man who they called Nigel is actually a magician. He's playing the role of a telepathic who can read the symbols on these cards. As the test progresses, Nigel's correct answers start adding up. Partway through, they ask that he turned around to be sure that he's not picking up clues from the audience. Later, they even lower a screen.

Jim Underdown>> He ended up passing the test with flying colors. He defied millions to one odds in his guessing of these cards.

Val Zavala>> Many in the audience were suspicious, but everyone was amazed. This was the first time they had seen such a success. After a long discussion and various hypotheses, Jim Underdown made an announcement.

Jim Underdown>> "Let's talk about the way we would have conducted this experiment had it been real." It wasn't a joke. It was actually a learning tool to get them thinking about what might happen in these situations.

Val Zavala>> So how did they do it? In various ways. First, Jim held the card up to the light so Nigel could see through it.

Jim Underdown>> "Cheat number one."

Val Zavala>> Second, they wrote the symbol on the chalkboard and, if you listen carefully, you could tell what the symbol was.

Jim Underdown>> "That's very easy. That's cheat number two."

Val Zavala>> Then there was someone in the audience giving signals to Nigel.

Jim Underdown>> "Did anyone see it? Did anyone notice that he was sending signals out?"

Val Zavala>> And finally, even with the screen down, Jim was able to give subtle audio cues corresponding to the symbols.

[Film Clip]

Jim Underdown>> "One-word cue in each one."

John Suarez>> Just because we're technologically the most advanced country, nevertheless, that doesn't mean that in areas of science or reason in critical thinking, we're equally advanced. It doesn't go hand in hand.

Val Zavala>> John Suarez has been a long-time member of the Center for Inquiry.

John Suarez>> I think that, in fact, it's gotten to the point that at times we feel that reason is fighting uphill against forces that are anti-critical, anti-reason.

Val Zavala>> But is this group saying there are absolutely no people who possess paranormal abilities?

Jim Underdown>> Yeah, my personal take is that I'm sure there are things out there that we don't know about. I mean, science doesn't know everything. I would say that a vast majority of these claims are extremely unlikely.

Val Zavala>> And how about that fifty thousand dollars? Do they think they'll ever have to pay up?

Jim Underdown>> I would say that it's possible. We give people a legitimate chance to come in and prove their ability. There's no trickery on our part, but no one's been able to do it so far and you would have thought that worldwide, with all these psychics and all these people making these claims, someone would have come forward and won this money.

Val Zavala>> You can go to the Center for Inquiry at cfiwest.org for more information and to watch the unedited video of Psychic Challenge.

Announcer>> To send a comment or a question to our program, you can reach us by mail at this address:

Life and Times
4401 Sunset Blvd.
Los Angeles, California 90027

You can also call our viewer comment line (323) 953-5555) or contact us the fast way by e-mail at kcet.org.

Val Zavala>> Some of Los Angeles's best public art is underground. It's part of our subway system, which means you'd have to be willing to take public transportation to see it. But Vicki Curry was and here's what she saw.

Vicki Curry>> From Canoga Park to Long Beach, as riders rush to catch their trains, they're passing by some of Los Angeles's best public art.

Maya Emsden>> Probably a lot of them aren't aware that there's art around them and that doesn't bother me at all. I just want them to feel like somebody cares about this space and that there's been a lot of thought that has gone into this customer environment that we have.

Barbara Lashenik>> I'm sure it must enhance everybody's experience as they walk through these stations and they're faced with these beautiful hand-painted murals and gorgeous tile work or fabulous seating that's made out of wonderful materials. It really is an extraordinary project.

Vicki Curry>> Los Angeles County's Metro Art Program is one of the largest public transit art programs in the world. It started in 1989 when the rail system was still in the planning stages.

Maya Emsden>> Rail was a whole new thing in Los Angeles and people were wary of taking transit, ware of the system as a whole. So we really needed to make the stations as inviting as possible.

Vicki Curry>> Maya Emsden runs Metro's art department.

Maya Emsden>> The unique thing about Los Angeles is that we incorporated it at the very beginning. So even before the stations opened, they had artworks incorporated rather than having it as an afterthought. There are several stations that we have where the artist and the architect actually worked hand in hand from a relatively early point in the whole design process.

[Film Clip]

Vicki Curry>> Metro has commissioned over two hundred fifty original artworks designed specifically for their sites. Maya, we're in the east portal of Union Station and it looks like there are several art projects just in this area alone.

Maya Emsden>> There are. Well, actually, there's one overwhelming project, but it has many, many, many components. It was actually done by a team of artists. The Los Angeles River actually used to flow right here where we're standing.

Vicki Curry>> Oh, really?

Maya Emsden>> And it was diverted, so the artists were really interested in that natural history.

Vicki Curry>> The project is called "City of Dreams, River of History". The settlers of Los Angeles fill the wall by muralist, Richard Wyatt. The river is represented by masons, bench and sculpture which incorporates artifacts that were excavated during the building of the station.

Maya Emsden>> And then it continues with an aquarium downstairs with live fish. We actually have live fish as part of our art collection. If you take a tour, you'll see the wide variety of not only materials, artists, styles, as well as kind of the different approaches that we've taken where in some stations we've integrated them, in some stations they're stand-alone pieces, the really wide range of works.

Vicki Curry>> I wouldn't necessarily have noticed this, but this is a piece of art also?

Maya Emsden>> (Laughter) It is a piece of art. It's one of the most popular ones. It's called "A Train" and it's by the artist, Bill Bell. This piece you can appreciate as just a visual, doing a visual thing right now, just as sort of an abstract. But if you relax your eye, you actually see images floating past.

Vicki Curry>> Metro is the only transit agency in the world to offer guided tours of its art, and train docents lead the free tours. Barbara Lashenik created the docent program in the late 1990s once she learned about Metro's collection.

Barbara Lashenik>> Well, I think it opens peoples' eyes to the art that's in the stations because many commuters and people will walk right by it and this is an opportunity for them to learn about the art. I know that people that we've taken on tours who never have ridden public transportation before call and tell us that they're now using it and they learned how to use the system, but they also really enjoyed learning about the art.

Vicki Curry>> Metro's artwork isn't always obviously art and it isn't just limited to the subway. The seat fabric in the buses was designed by Kay White. The posters were designed by various local artists.

Maya Emsden>> They represent neighborhoods that are around Los Angeles County.

Vicki Curry>> Artists also created bus shelters like this one at Union Station, and street level entrances like the one at the Civic Center Station.

Maya Emsden>> The First and Hill entrance to the station, that was another piece that we added just in the past couple of years by an artist named Sam Koontz. She transformed that whole entrance from what was a sort of uninviting, concrete area into a beautiful almost like a hanging garden made out of glass mosaic.

Vicki Curry>> Jim Isermann devised a new fa�ade for the Customer Service Center at Wilshire and La Brea.

Jim Isermann>> It was a welcome back at Design Coffee Shop. It was designed in the late 1940s and had a very long life. Then because the building was slated for demolition, there was kind of a sad entombment of stucco that happened sometime in the 1980s. So what intrigued me about this project is now there's three layers on this building.

There's the original architecture, there's this stucco wrap, and now this piece that sits on top of the stucco. The most amazing thing about it, the day that we were installing, I realized that more people drive by this in one day than have been in twenty-five years of gallery exhibitions that I've had. So it's kind of amazing, just the amount of people who see it.

Maya Emsden>> It really does expose their work to a much larger audience than those that just visit galleries and museums. If you look at the roster of the two hundred artists that we've commissioned, it ranges from very young, emerging artists to extremely well-established artists.

Vicki Curry>> As Metro's art collection has grown in size, it's also focused on commissioning works by the world's most renowned artists.

Maya Emsden>> I think when the program was initially started, I mentioned that it was partially somewhat of a mitigation measure. How could we get people to try taking transit? I think we've moved much farther than that over the ten or fifteen years of the program. It's less about mitigation. Now people really are looking for the best quality work that we can bring.

Next to us, above us, is Jonathan Borofsky. Jonathan Borofsky is one of our internationally recognized artists. He was commissioned when the station first opened. This piece is called "I Dreamed I Could Fly".

It's not intended to reach out and grab you and say, "Look at me, look at me." Many of the people, of course, that are using our system use it every day, so they might not even notice for a year. Then other people look for them each and every day.

Vicki Curry>> Whether you're a regular Metro rider or an art lover who only takes the subway to see the latest artworks, Metro's world-class collection is worth checking out.

Barbara Lashenik>> It's outstanding and people always ask, "What's your favorite?" I don't have a favorite because, in truth, each one is so unique and of such high caliber and wonderful quality. It really does enhance the whole experience of living in Los Angeles.

Val Zavala>> The MTA offers free tours of its art collection. They happen the first Saturday and Sunday of every month. For details, you can go to their website at metro.net/art. And that's our program. I'm Val Zavala. Thanks for watching. We'll see you next time.

Announcer>> Life and Times was made possible through the generous support of the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of medicine, health, science and education.

And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg.

Sponsored in part by:


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