Californians must step up pressure to ensure a full cleanup of toxic Santa Susana lab

Nuclear cleanup efforts across the U.S. have revealed a grim reality: the nation’s toxic nuclear waste legacy continues to endanger communities while those responsible evade accountability. 

At Los Alamos in New Mexico, newly exposed plutonium contamination poses long-term risks, while the ongoing cleanup at the Hanford Site in Washington remains a decades-long symbol of nuclear waste mismanagement. These national failures resonate deeply in Southern California, where the Santa Susana Field Laboratory increasingly represents that same neglect. 

Despite an opportunity for California leaders to champion a thorough cleanup at Santa Susana, they’ve instead allowed toxic waste to linger, putting their constituents’ health and safety at risk. 

Lying between the Simi and San Fernando valleys, Santa Susana was once a hub for rocket testing and nuclear reactor development. Decades of chemical pollutants and radiological contamination — including a 1959 partial reactor meltdown — remain in the soil and groundwater.

The plant was decommissioned in 2006, but cleanup has been painfully slow. Roughly 700,000 people, who live within 10 miles of the site, are exposed to health risks, including elevated cancer rates and other long-term illnesses. 

Moreover, after the 2018 Woolsey Fire, environmental sampling found radioactive materials had spread off-site into publicly accessible lands. Oddly enough, this summer’s wildfires drew comparisons to the aftermath of a nuclear explosion. But without a thorough cleanup, Santa Susana’s radioactive waste could produce an actual nuclear catastrophe if it was overrun by wildfire.  

Boeing, NASA and the Department of Energy bear responsibility for the cleanup as co-owners of the site, and have reached several agreements with regulators over the years. Unfortunately, disputes over the extent of contamination and cleanup standards have stalled the work. California’s Department of Toxic Substances Control, or DTSC, is the lead regulator overseeing the cleanup and has made public promises to hold the owners accountable by ensuring they remove all manmade contaminants and return the site to its natural state. 

Rather than advancing remediation efforts, however, DTSC has eased regulations, leading to a disastrous program environmental impact report, or PEIR, that undermines years of expert and advocate work. This key environmental evaluation, which is required under state law, leaves a vast majority of contaminated soil unaddressed. 

While the window to directly challenge the PEIR has narrowed, it remains open due to a so-called tolling agreement allowing for future legal action over specific “decision documents.” However, by choosing not to sue now over the entire PEIR, officials are making a dangerous bet: With each delay, more people will be exposed to the site’s toxins, the costs of remediation will rise, and the likelihood of successfully challenging individual aspects of the PEIR will dwindle.

Worse still, there’s a real risk that courts could refuse to entertain these piecemeal lawsuits, leaving Californians without recourse. 

It’s now up to the public to demand immediate action. Local, state and federal representatives must be pressured to file a lawsuit over the PEIR before it’s too late.

The consequences of inaction are too great. When others see California doing the bare minimum to ensure the safety and health of its residents, it lowers standards of accountability and weakens resolve for stringent environmental and public health policies. Such a precedent undermines decades of progress in environmental regulation and public health protection and sets a dangerous norm that could take years, if not generations, to correct. 

The Santa Susana cleanup failures are emblematic of a broader national problem where nuclear sites like Los Alamos and Hanford suffer from years of delays and inadequate oversight. In each case, the communities most affected are left to bear the brunt of this neglect. 

Ordinary citizens must step up and hold our elected officials accountable to ensure that this cleanup meets the standards of justice and safety that California communities deserve. Willful neglect of the consequences of our nuclear past creates a fallout all its own — one that poisons our souls, not just our soil.