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 the state allowed the demolition for at least one of the buildings to go forward in 2013 without proper procedural review. Five of the six structures at issue remain in place, according to PSR.
At issue is Boeing’s decision 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.
The three parties responsible for cleanup of Santa Susana are the Department of Energy, NASA, and Boeing.
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.
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.
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.
