Protesters gathered at the Rancho Santa Susana Community Center in Simi Valley on Oct. 7 in protest of the Santa Susana Field Laboratory (SSFL) cleanup agreements not being honored.

Attendees held a moment of silence for the SSFL agreements, dressed in all-black funeral attire and stood in front of makeshift tombstones, a hearse and a coffin. The tombstones included sayings such as “Santa Susana Field Lab Cleanup 2007-2025,” “public trust,” “resident with garden scenario,” “RIP toxic free” and “health.”

Each protestor held a rose, which they took turns placing on the coffin at the end of their demonstration.

The cleanup agreements were made in 2007 and 2010 with the aim to get the site as close to its original state as possible – without toxic waste and radiation – were meant to be completed by 2017. However, the cleanup was not completed and, according to Parents Against SSFL (PASSFL), was nullified by the Program Environmental Impact Report (PEIR) and is no longer being implemented.

PASSFL is an organization dedicated to advocating for cleanup agreements to be enforced and raising awareness about the effects that the facility has left on neighboring communities. They have a timeline of agreements spanning from 2005 to 2024.

Melissa Bumstead, director and founder of PASSFL, said harmful impacts of SSFL include toxic waste and radiation that is suspected to correspond with higher cancer rates. She also claimed the agencies that own SSFL have ignored peer-reviewed studies and scientists who have done research on the effects of the lab’s usage on surrounding communities.

“This is not the American dream that we have poured our lives into,” Bumstead said.

The SSFL, formerly known as Rocketdyne, was used as a development and testing site for rocket engines, as well as for nuclear and liquid metals research from the 1950s until 2006. The site is partially owned by the U.S. government, but administered by NASA and the Boeing company, which leases it to the Department of Energy (DOE).

According to PASSFL, the site’s contaminants include “toxic and radioactive leaks, spills, fires, open-air burn pits, and illegal waste management practices that resulted in an FBI raid in 1996.”

PASSFL was founded by mothers in nearby communities with children who were diagnosed with cancer. On their website, they cite studies on the correlation between the SSFL and cancer rates in cities surrounding it.

According to The Breast Cancer Mapping Project, West LA and East Ventura County were one of four distinct areas with a 10-20% higher rate of invasive breast cancer than the statewide rate. PASSFL also has a self-reported pediatric cancer map, which displays cases of children with cancer around the SSFL.

Grace Bumstead, Melissa Bumstead’s daughter, has had Philadelphia chromosome-positive acute lymphoblastic leukemia, or Ph+ ALL, twice.

“It feels ethereal. I was friends with kids who unfortunately passed away,” Grace said. “I’m lucky to get treatment.”

While being interviewed for a project PASSFL is producing, Grace said she will not stop screaming and advocating for the cleaning of the toxic site.

After the funeral demonstration, attendants were encouraged to stay and watch an informational telecast by the Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC) on Boeing’s new Corrective Measures Study, which also no longer agrees to a full site cleanup. According to a PASSFL press release, Boeing and DTSC agreed on a complete cleanup, yet the new agreements would leave most of the pollution in Boeing’s area in place.

“It’s been a long and tragic saga of the polluters doing everything in their considerable power to wriggle out of their cleanup agreements,” said Haakon Williams, deputy director of the Committee to Bridge the Gap. “The DTSC has unfortunately been subject to what we call ‘regulatory capture,’ where the regulators who are supposed to be protecting the public from polluters are in fact doing the opposite.”

Despite challenges, organizers have not lost hope and believe a full cleanup could still happen.

“This is our home and none of us want to leave it,” Bumstead said.

Editor’s note: This article was edited on Oct. 13 to fix prior misspellings.