SAN FRANCISCO (CN) - The U.S. Navy and Environmental Protection Agency asked a federal judge on Wednesday to dismiss multiple claims that the government is mismanaging a decades-long radioactive waste cleanup at Hunter's Point Naval Shipyard in San Francisco.

At the hearing, the Navy argued that there is no claim in the lawsuit for the court to address and said that the environmental group bringing the lawsuit, Greenaction for Health and Environmental Justice, was "fundamentally confused" as to the laws governing the waste cleanup.

The military branch asked U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria, a Barack Obama appointee, to dismiss three out of the lawsuit's four claims for failure to state a claim.

However, Greenaction argued that the Navy has created an ongoing violation of its previous cleanup agreement by being repeatedly late on its required five-year reviews of the cleanup effort, noting that the parties can't agree on what timeline it should be on for these reviews.

Greenaction further argued that the people living in the Hunter's Point neighborhood, who are most affected by the cleanup, can't continue to tolerate such delays.

"It's important to my clients, your honor, because they do not trust the Navy to do a good job on this cleanup," Steven Castleman of the UC Berkeley Law School Environmental Law Clinic, who represented Greenaction, told the judge.

Greenaction, a grassroots environmental group in San Francisco, sued the Navy and EPA in 2024 over claims that the government has failed to enforce its Hunter's Point cleanup agreement with California and the Navy, violating several environmental laws, including the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act and the National Contingency Plan.

Hunter's Point has been a hotbed for radiation concerns in recent years. The former shipyard was operated by the Navy between 1945 and 1974 and was home to radiation experiments from 1946 to 1969. Ships returning from hydrogen bomb tests were also decontaminated at the site, furthering the risk of radioactive contamination.

The EPA has overseen the Navy's cleanup efforts at the site since 1992, which is now being redeveloped for housing.

The legal issue in court, it seems, comes down to the Navy's timing.

Greenaction claims the Navy has missed key deadlines to review its work plans, as it is required to do every five years as a result of its 1992 agreement with the EPA.

The environmental group argues that, according to the agreement, the Navy's five-year review must be issued on the anniversary of the date remedial actions were initiated in July 1998.

Greenaction argues that the Navy has been getting looser with these deadlines as the years have gone on, and that documents that were initially only late by a month or more have escalated to the point that the most recent review arrived a year late, in 2024 instead of 2023.

As a matter of policy, the Navy said that this five-year time period restarts with the release of its previous report, not the anniversary of its cleanup program's initiation.

"The Navy does believe they have to do a five-year review every five years. I don't think anybody disagrees with that," David Mitchell of the Department of Justice, who represented the Navy, said. "I think there is a disagreement about when that date is."

The Navy also argued that some of Greenaction's claims were not ready to be in the courtroom, seeing as how it was also suing over claims that the Navy was not on track to meet its July 2028 deadline for its next five-year review.

"The law's language does not allow this court to review an anticipatory claim that may arise three years in the future," Mitchell said.

Although Chhabria said that the environmental group likely doesn't need to wait three years for an impending injury to manifest, he was also critical of Greenaction's position that there were no valid excuses to delay the five-year review deadlines - not even worldwide pandemics like Covid-19.

"How are you advancing the cause of environmental protection by arguing that position?" the judge asked Greenaction.

The judge said he would soon issue a ruling.

As part of its 2024 lawsuit, Greenaction seeks to force the military branch to honor a 2018 agreement to retest approximately one-third of the site previously decontaminated by its former contractor, Tetra Tech EC.

In 2018, the federal government separately sued Tetra Tech after whistleblowers accused the contractor of falsifying soil tests that were supposed to verify the decontamination of a 400-acre site where more than 10,000 homes are slated to be built - one of the largest redevelopment projects in San Francisco history. 

When asked at a previous hearing why the Navy couldn't just retest 100% of the site for radiation, the military branch's attorney called the idea a "major" and "expensive" endeavor.

Greenaction filed its first amended complaint in October 2024. The Navy filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit one month later.

Although Chhabria had harsh words for the environmental group in January over the way their lawsuit was written, the judge ultimately allowed the group to amend its lawsuit, which was refiled in April.

The U.S. Navy moved to partially dismiss three out of the four claims brought by Greenaction in May.

An attorney for Greenaction declined to comment on the hearing, saying they needed time to confer with their clients first.

A spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Justice did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Source: Courthouse News Service