A California Superior Court judge has rejected arguments by the Los Angeles branch of Physicians for Social Responsibility and other groups that state regulators could prevent Boeing from tearing down several old structures at the Santa Susana Field Laboratory (SSFL) site.
The advocacy groups argued in a 2013 lawsuit that the state allowed demolition of at least one of the buildings that year without proper procedural review. Five of the six structures at issue remain in place, according to PSR-LA Associate Director Denise Duffield. “The sixth structure had been demolished and removed prior to the litigation being filed.”
The aerospace giant in 2013 decided in 2013 to demolish select buildings, some of which were radiologically contaminated, at SSFL, a 2,800-acre site used for nuclear power and rocket research from shortly after World War II until the 1980s. It is now being readied for cleanup by the Department of Energy, NASA, and Boeing.
The lawsuit involves Boeing-owned facilities inside Area IV at Santa Susana. It is separate from a 2010 state-federal administrative order covering remediation of the DOE-controlled Area IV and Northern Buffer Zone.
In a decision dated Nov. 19, Judge Richard Sueyoshi, of Sacramento County Superior Court, rejected a request for a formal written order finding Boeing’s plan to tear down the six obsolete buildings constituted a “project” under the California Environmental Quality Act. Such a designation would have prompted an environmental impact report ahead of the work.
If a state agency is considering approval of a project subject to CEQA, then it must do an environmental impact report (EIR) if the work could have significant environmental implications, the judge noted in the decision. No environmental report was prepared for Boeing’s planned demolition of the structures, some of which only had slabs left after the building shells were dismantled in the 1990s.
“We had asked that Respondents comply with CEQA prior to approving the demolition of the remaining structures, and that any approval to proceed to demolition be enjoined until compliance with CEQA was demonstrated,” Duffield said in a Tuesday email. “We are reviewing options as to an appeal.”
In addition to PSR, the other petitioners are the Southern California Federation of Scientists, the Committee to Bridge the Gap, and Consumer Watchdog.
The plaintiffs had accused the state Departments of Toxic Substances Control and Public Health of “underground regulations” for letting Boeing’s demolition go forward. A lower court had ruled the plaintiffs were likely to prevail against DTSC but not DPH. The plaintiffs argued even if the state could not halt the project, an environmental impact report would still be valuable for public awareness.
The petitioners contended DTSC “approved” Boeing’s demolition and asserted the state agency erred in not treating the work as part of the overall SSFL remediation project, which requires an environmental report. The Department of Toxic Substances Control was consulted by Boeing prior to demolition and did advise the company to submit some debris from the site to additional radiological screening.
The California DTSC confirmed this summer that its program management plan, which serves as a cleanup road map for the entire 2,800-acre Santa Susana Field Laboratory site, won’t be ready until 2019. The report had been expected this year and its delay could affect hopes for significant cleanup work to start next year.
The overall Santa Susana remediation effort has a history of missed deadlines already, in that only a few years ago stakeholders were expecting cleanup would be well underway in 2017. It is a complex task which includes digging up and disposing of 2.5 million cubic yards of soil off-site.
