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A trial date has been set in the dispute between the state and The Boeing Company over a law that requires the strictest standards for the cleanup of the Santa Susana Field Laboratory.
The June 7, 2011 date could mean that the contaminated site—a former rocket engine and nuclear energy test facility in the hills two miles south of Simi—won’t have a new order to guide the cleanup for another year.
Local watchdog activist Christina Walsh, who runs the website CleanUpRocketdyne.org, said Senate Bill 990, the state law Boeing is challenging, is supposed to be about protecting people and the environment, not about making lawyers richer.
“I don’t think there’s any effort whatsoever to make any progress until this (legal) decision is made. So I’m not happy about this delay, I’m not happy to have to wait,” Walsh said. The aerospace giant filed the suit against the state Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC) last November.
“We were hoping for something sooner. We were hoping for something this fall,” said Kamara Sams, spokesperson for Boeing.
Sams said it is worrisome to Boeing that there might not be a new cleanup agreement until next summer. She said the company was concerned that would happen when a Sacramento judge transferred the case from Northern California to Los Angeles in June.
“We were concerned because we had gotten so far in the process that transferring it could cause a delay in the outcome, so we’re very concerned that the date was set so far in (the future),” she said. “But we’re still optimistic that it can be resolved quickly.”
Rick Brausch, the state’s field lab project director, said in an e-mail to the Acorn that it is willing to negotiate a cleanup agreement with the responsible parties regardless of the status of the litigation and is hopeful it can do so “well in advance of” the trial date.
The legal battle over whether or not SB 990 should guide the cleanup has been going on quietly for nine months now.
Boeing, the field lab’s largest stakeholder, filed the lawsuit last year to challenge the constitutionality of the 2008 law, partly because the company says it’s unsure its high standards can be attained.
The decision came after nearly a year of unsuccessful negotiations among the state and the three agencies responsible for the 2,850-acre site’s chemical and radiological contamination: Boeing, NASA and the Department of Energy.
The DTSC—the state agency overseeing the cleanup—had been in the process of trying to amend an agreement among the parties to include the provisions of SB 990. It is supposed to serve as the blueprint for the investigation and decontamination of the site.
The cleanup of the field lab is currently proceeding under the 2007 consent order, but that order does not address the site’s radiological contamination.
Boeing initially filed its suit in Sacramento, but on June 18, Judge Garland Burrell, Jr. ruled the case be transferred to Los Angeles, finding that local controversies should be decided at home. There’s a strong public interest for doing so in this case, the judge added.
Boeing didn’t want the transfer, Sams said, because it had already moved so far along in the legal process in Sacramento. The company had filed a summary judgment motion in order to get a faster resolution of the lawsuit, requesting that the judge rule based on the legal briefs submitted. A date for oral arguments had even been set.
“We were trying to make it as expeditious as possible. Now that there’s a new court, new trial date, that’s a new process. That includes witness testimony,” Sams said.
Now, Boeing and the DTSC have to resubmit their briefs to the court.
Despite the delay, Walsh said,the judge made the right decision. “I think it’s important the argument takes place here so the people that are affected can hear it with their own ears if they wish to,” she said.
In addition to transferring the case, the court ordered the parties to enter into mediation, which must be finished by Jan. 11, 2011.
The goal of mediation is that Boeing and the state can resolve the issue out of court, before going to trial. But Brausch said that would be difficult.
“If the subject of the mediation is to work out a compromise with respect to SB 990, the state is legally constrained by its constitution,” the field lab project director said. “California state agencies such as DTSC are required to enforce a state law such as SB 990 unless it is declared unconstitutional by an appellate court.”
Walsh said she doesn’t have high hopes that the two sides will be able to reach an agreement in mediation since it seems both refuse to uncross their arms.
“I think their heels are still dug in,” she said.
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