Are you talking about the Santa Susana Labs that was used by Rocketdyne for a period of time? Or is there another area with a similarly screwed up story?

I live in the area (about 5 miles south of the former lab) and didn't hear anything about it until I moved here. Since then I've read stories about how people living in Simi Valley used to be able to watch some of their rocket tests.

Those labs are also the site of one of the worst nuclear power incident in the US - but this was in the 50s. There are also reports of Rocketdyne shooting barrels of chemicals until they exploded into the 90s. Apparently they regularly and illegally disposed of contaminated materials by burning them in open air pits. That's a little insane.