A Sacramento County Superior Court judge has ruled that a case filed by environmentalists and anti-nuclear activists against the toxics department over the cleanup of the Santa Susana Field Laboratory site in southern California can proceed, rejecting a motion for summary judgment by The Boeing Co., which is at the center of the dispute.

A Sacramento judge has denied the Boeing Co.’s motion that argued that demolition and disposal of old buildings on the Santa Susana Field Laboratory can proceed without any intervention by state regulators.

Santa Monica, CA -- Sacramento Superior Court has denied Boeing’s motion for summary judgment in a California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) lawsuit over the demolition and disposal of radioactively contaminated structures from the site of a partial nuclear meltdown near Los Angeles, Consumer Watchdog said today.

July will mark the 55th anniversary of the partial nuclear meltdown at the Santa Susana Field Laboratory in the hills near Simi Valley.

That event occurred from July 12 to July 26, 1959, which some have described as the longest nuclear accident in history.

Any way you cut it, the situation at the Santa Susana Field Laboratory site outside Simi Valley is a mess.

The 2,850-acre former rocket engine test center is contaminated by a vast menu of radioactive isotopes and toxic chemicals. The condition of its soil, groundwater and structures makes it one of the most challenging cleanup jobs in the state, possibly the country.

Consumer Watchdog, a Santa Monica-based advocacy group, is accusing Boeing Co. of hindering efforts to properly clean up its portion of the Santa Susana Field Laboratory in Simi Valley.

Boeing owns about 80 percent of the former field lab, including a portion known as Area IV that experienced a partial nuclear meltdown in 1959. The rest of the site belongs to the federal government.

In 1979, a nuclear power reactor at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania suffered a partial meltdown. There was widespread anxiety nationwide. As a reporter at KNBC, Channel 4, I reported that a similar accident, a much smaller research reactor in the Santa Suzanna Mountains, had occurred 20 years earlier — near Los Angeles. Now, all these years later — after decades of studies, reports and regulatory hearings by state and federal agencies, the radioactive residue from that accident has not been completely cleaned up.

A consumer group charged Thursday that Boeing lobbyists persuaded the California Department of Toxic Substances Control to abandon a planned full cleanup of Boeing’s portion of the Santa Susana Field Lab, site of a 1959 partial nuclear meltdown.