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Clarita's Crashes
August, 2011 - Issue #82
National media exposure for Santa Clarita is rare. Most recently, it came with Jamie Oliver's "Food Revolution." Oliver wanted to improve local school lunches as part of his reality-TV program. He discussed possibilities with SCV School Food Services Agency CAO, Pavel Matustik. Things didn't go so well for Oliver, who wasn't afforded access to Claritan schools. "My Board of Directors got scared of you... People are running scared, they worry about negative publicity," explained Matustik. And things didn't go so well for Matustik, either, whose appearance was later ridiculed on "The Soup."

A crash and burn of the more literal sort played out better. A security camera caught a Nissan colliding with Chevron gas pumps at the station on Newhall Avenue and Sierra Highway. The dramatic video shows a high-speed impact, flames, smoke and customers sprinting to evade the car and fire (Type "santa clarita gas station crash" to view the video on YouTube.). Amazingly, no one died, and the clip was the kind beloved by newscasts and bloggers so it spread quickly.

But these are hardly the only crashes shaping conversation in the SCV.

Sentencing
There are some events that can't have a happy ending; an acceptable outcome is the best we can hope for. And there is now an acceptable conclusion to a horrible vehicle-bicycle collision that occurred in 2009. Marco Valencia, then 20, was driving drunk down Bouquet Canyon Road. His blood alcohol level was three times the legal limit. Valencia struck a group of bicyclists, killing Joseph Novotny and injuring three others. Sheldon Haselwood reported driving behind Valencia at the time, and said he was being extremely reckless on the road and just scarcely avoided vehicular collisions before crashing into the bicyclists.

What is outrageous is that Valencia just kept on driving after he struck Novotny and his fellow cyclists. Police wouldn't arrest him until catching up to his truck an hour and a half after the fatal crash. What's even more outrageous is that Valencia had two misdemeanor DUIs before this fatal one (how does a minor who shouldn't even be drinking get DUIs counted as mere misdemeanors?). He also had prior convictions for illegal drug and alcohol possession. This June, Valencia was finally sentenced and will serve 26 years to life in prison.

Impact
Santa Clarita is like the island from "Lost," not just because it defies explanation and feels like an inescapable prison, but because it has a habit of pulling planes out of the sky. Airplane crashes with more or less devastating results dot the annals of Santa Clarita history. In 1936, a DC2 Airliner crashed in a canyon near Saugus, killing 12. In 1974, a pilot made an emergency landing on a dirt road near what was West End Auto Wrecking. His plane finally came to a stop after crashing into the wrecking yard office, pinning Frances Tracy at her desk and breaking both of her legs. In 2009, two men died in an aircraft crash, ironically hitting ground on Triumph Avenue. A Cirrus SR22 crashed in Agua Dulce less than a year ago, killing three people and the same number of horses.

And this June, Kashif Khursheed landed on Santa Clarita Parkway when, he said, his plane's engine developed problems. (He was able to say this because he survived the landing, as you may have guessed).

I think it's pretty apparent that we need a nice big airfield so that as planes continue to drop out of the sky, at least they have a target.

How's Your Thyroid?
Bombs and rockets make for quintessential crashes, but their manufacture has led to a slow-motion crash of another sort beneath Santa Clarita. The ammonium perchlorate produced during weapons manufacturing at the Whittaker-Bermite site has been slowly moving through groundwater for decades. When it reaches a well, the water must be treated. The chemical is a concern because long-term, low-level exposure can affect thyroid function and cause other health problems. In August of 2010, Valencia Water Company shut down a well - one rather close to City Hall - because it showed unacceptable levels of perchlorate contamination. The closure wasn't revealed to the public or to city officials until nearly a year later.

The threat of a spreading perchlorate plume was the last card that those opposed to the city's new General Plan had to play. Speakers at a city council meeting suggested it might creep more broadly across the valley, threatening the water supply, but water officials strongly disagreed on the severity of the problem. It has been a battle of ideologies over perchlorate, and one that won't go away anytime soon. The aftermath of any crash is the tricky part, and how we handle the damage and clean up will reveal how much we heart SCV.
This column is intended as satire and a (sometimes successful) attempt at humor. Suggestions, catty comments and veiled threats intended for the author can be e-mailed to iheartscv@insidescv.com.
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