The Court of Federal Claims awarded $84 million to four oil companies for costs they incurred cleaning up waste stemming from the production of aviation gasoline during World War II under contracts with the U.S. government. The government argued that the oil companies are not entitled to recover all...
The Eighth Circuit affirmed a lower court order holding that a company substantially complied with a state's remediation plan for cleaning up PCB contamination at a hazardous waste site. The company's predecessor-in-interest operated an electrical transformer repair facility on the subject property,...
A district court denied New Jersey's motion to amend a 1997 consent decree concerning the Gloucester Environmental Management Services, Inc., landfill and ordered it to comply with the terms of the decree. The state alleged that the detection of the presence of radionuclides requires a new remedy fo...
A district ruled on several pre-trial motions of both defendants and plaintiffs alleging property damage caused by a defendant's contamination at its nearby chemical manufacturing facility (a designated Superfund site), negligence, fraud, fraudulent concealment, strict liability, trespass, and civil...
In September 1991, 25 people died at the Imperial Food Products plant in Hamlet, North Carolina, when they were trapped in a factory fire. Witnesses to the fire said the employees could not escape because the building doors were locked, apparently to prevent pilferage. The North Carolina assistant labor commissioner subsequently stated that the locked doors constituted "serious violations" of the Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSH Act). The plant, however, had never been inspected for health or safety violations in its 11 years of operation.
New rules are emerging to change the way the government makes decisions about cleanup of hazardous waste sites under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA or Superfund). These changes have altered Superfund decisionmaking fundamentally and irrevocably, requiring the government to reach for new levels of accountability, rationality, and consistency. Central to the government's ability to meet this challenge is the way in which it makes and explains decisions about acceptable risks and required levels of cleanup.
Editors' Summary: Redeveloping abandoned urban hazardous waste sites, or brownfields, can significantly benefit developers, local communities, and the environment. Developers can purchase brownfields inexpensively, and subsequent redevelopment brings jobs to local communities and economic growth to inner cities, while allowing virgin land to remain pristine. Yet, barriers to redevelopment, such as the probability of legal liability, uncertainty regarding cleanup standards, and lenders' unwillingness to finance contaminated property, can make redevelopment extremely risky and difficult.
When the 103d Congress convened on January 5, 1993, many observers believed that it would make up for the dismal environmental record of its predecessor. The 102d Congress had tried and failed to reauthorize the Federal Water Pollution Control Act (FWPCA), the Endangered Species Act (ESA), and the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA). Its attempt to elevate the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to a cabinet-level department had been blocked in the House of Representatives, and its attempt to reform the General Mining Law of 1872 had been blocked in both houses.
Environmental regulation of pollution in the United States is often maligned as costly and ineffective. Pollution continues to plague and degrade the natural resources in the United States, and U.S. waters in particular. Nonpoint source pollution is currently the most significant source of water pollution, but it is also the most unregulated. While other discharges into U.S. waters have been dramatically reduced since the Federal Water Pollution Control Act (FWPCA) was enacted, nonpoint source pollution—caused most by runoff from agricultural operations—has increased.
In New York v. SCA Services, Inc., the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York rejected the notion that a transporter cannot be an arranger under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA). This Dialogue reviews the parties' arguments and the court's opinion. It then analyzes the impact this case will have on transporters.