At the EPA, we begin with the assumption that people who never expected to be will find themselves involved in toxic-waste cases. Generally, we will seek out everyone associated with the contaminated property and send them a notice letter of potential liability. Thereafter, many questions will be raised about the fact of—and the extent of—liability, and those who are contacted will be invited to join in the relevant decisions. At a minimum, these people will experience the irritation of considering whether they are liable and perhaps seeking out advice. With few exceptions, the Agency strives to make no distinctions when it gives notice, in part because we often lack the information necessary to determine liability with precision.

Our objective is to clean up sites. Thus, we take broad, sometimes ambiguous provisions of the law and constantly seek to expand them to further that end. In certain areas, the result is that potentially responsible parties will encounter considerable difficulty, in a way that they might not now suspect.