Editors' Summary: To promote prompt cost recovery and equitable allocation of liability for remediation costs assessed under CERCLA, Congress granted liable parties the right to sue other potentially responsible parties (PRPs) for contribution. The exercise of this right, however, has resulted in inequity and undue complexity. In trying to determine what constitutes a fair allocation of remediation costs, courts have applied allocation techniques that ignore basic economic principles.

This Article surveys the current state of Superfund cost allocation and proposes an old method to address this new problem. The authors review the relevant provisions of CERCLA, the legislative history, and the attempts that courts have made to determine PRPs' fair share of remediation costs. The authors discuss the problems created by the existence of "common costs" at Superfund sites and propose three principles for evaluating cost allocation techniques. Applying these principles to each of the major allocation techniques currently being used, they find each technique wanting, and advocate the use of a stand-alone cost allocation method. This method, which has been used for decades in water resource projects, would allocate identifiable, direct cleanup costs to the responsible parties, and common costs according to the relative costs of cleaning up each PRP's waste as though that waste were the only waste at the site. The authors conclude that this method, although not necessarily appropriate in all situations, would provide a logical approach to cost allocation in a great variety of cases.