Judge rejects Boeing’s bid to demolish and dispose of radioactive waste without accountability

SANTA MONICA, CA – Sacramento Superior Court has denied Boeing’s motion for summary judgment in a California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) lawsuit over the demolition and disposal of radioactively contaminated structures from the site of a partial nuclear meltdown near Los Angeles, Consumer Watchdog said today.

“This is an important step on the way to ensuring that state regulators must consider the demolition and disposal of any radioactively contaminated structures at the Santa Susana Field Lab in their environmental assessment of the cleanup of this site,” said Consumer Watchdog Litigation Director Pam Pressley.

Boeing had claimed that the Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC) has no regulatory authority over the demolition and disposal of radioactively contaminated structures in the nuclear portion of the Santa Susana Field Lab (SSFL) in Simi Hills. The lab had tested small-scale nuclear reactors, rocket engines, and fuels and suffered a partial nuclear meltdown in 1959 that has never been fully cleaned up.

The Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC) did not oppose Boeing’s motion, nor did it present any evidence proving Boeing’s claim.

“It is time for DTSC to stop kowtowing to egregious polluters by looking the other way to save them money on cleanups while endangering the public health,” said Consumer Watchdog advocate Liza Tucker. “The state has to obey environmental laws when authorizing demolition and disposal of structures impregnated with radioactive wastes. This isn’t rocket-science.”

Tucker said that the lawsuit’s outcome could have broader ramifications over whether polluters need DTSC approval to oversee the cleanup of contaminated structures the agency routinely oversees at hundreds of other commercial and military sites across California.
Consumer Watchdog, Physicians for Social Responsibility-LA, Committee to Bridge the Gap, and the Southern California Federation of Scientists represented by Strumwasser & Woocher brought suit in August 2013 against DTSC and the Department of Public Health (DPH) for allowing demolition and illegal disposal of radioactively contaminated structures from Area IV of the SSFL site without prior public review as CEQA requires.

The judge issued a preliminary injunction against the DTSC in December 2013 that prevented the DTSC from allowing Boeing to further demolish and dispose of any contaminated structures from Area IV pending the final outcome of the lawsuit.

In this week’s order, Judge Allen Sumner wrote: “Whether CEQA requires DTSC to approve Boeing’s demolition and disposal activities is an issue of substantial and continuing interest…But this is not Boeing’s decision to make, much less by unilateral action. This issue will be decided when the court rules on the merits of Petitioners’ claims.”