Environmental activists won a major victory Wednesday when a judge declared that the U.S. Department of Energy continues to violate federal law in its cleanup of nuclear and chemical contamination at Boeing's Rocketdyne field laboratory near Simi Valley.
U.S. District Judge Samuel Conti also barred the DOE from transferring ownership of its Santa Susana property until it conducts a more thorough environmental review of its cleanup operations at the former nuclear and rocket engine testing facility.
"The Bush administration was trying to cut corners at the expense of public health, and the judge wasn't having any of it," said James Birkelund, a Los Angeles-based attorney for the lead plaintiff, the Natural Resources Defense Council.
Boeing Corp. spokeswoman Blythe Jameson said the company, which sold the remainder of the Rocketdyne assets in 2005 to United Technologies Corp.'s Pratt & Whitney unit for about $700 million, would withhold comment on the court ruling. Boeing still owns the 2,800-acre hilltop property that contains the lab.
"It's just been issued and we're reviewing the court's decision," Jameson said.
But Daniel Hirsch, president of the anti-nuclear group Committee to Bridge the Gap, a co-plaintiff in the lawsuit, said that nowhere in the 47-page ruling did the judge side with the DOE, and by extension the property owner, Boeing, which purchased the field lab 11 years ago.
"What the judge is essentially saying to the DOE is: 'You guys have really fouled up this cleanup; you've broken the law repeatedly. And I'm going to retain jurisdiction until I'm satisfied that you've met your obligations to clean up the mess you've made.' "
The two nonprofit environmental groups sued the Energy Department alleging that the cleanup plan for the property -- where U.S. agencies conducted nuclear research over four decades before ceasing operations in the late 1980s -- would leave dangerous levels of radioactive material and other toxic chemicals in the soil.
Energy Department officials have said that the site, where a nuclear reactor meltdown occurred in 1959, would pose no significant threat to human health or the environment after it is cleaned up. But critics and watchdog groups have demanded that a full environmental impact statement be prepared and that the site be cleaned up to tougher U.S. Environmental Protection Agency standards, which would require removal of tens of thousands of cubic yards of contaminated soil.
