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UNITED STATES v. BESTFOODS

Opinion of the Court

cert. denied, 502 U. S. 1004 (1991); United States v. Kayser-
Roth Corp., 910 F. 2d 24, 26 (CA1 1990) (“[A] person who is
an operator of a facility is not protected from liability by the
legal structure of ownership”).12

This much is easy to say: the difﬁculty comes in deﬁning
actions sufﬁcient to constitute direct parental “operation.”
Here of course we may again rue the uselessness of
CERCLA’s deﬁnition of a facility’s “operator” as “any person
. . . operating” the facility, 42 U. S. C. § 9601(20)(A)(ii), which
leaves us to do the best we can to give the term its “ordinary
or natural meaning.” Bailey v. United States, 516 U. S. 137,
145 (1995) (internal quotation marks omitted).
In a mechan-
ical sense, to “operate” ordinarily means “[t]o control the
functioning of; run: operate a sewing machine.” American
Heritage Dictionary 1268 (3d ed. 1992); see also Webster’s
New International Dictionary 1707 (2d ed. 1958) (“to work;
as, to operate a machine”). And in the organizational sense
more obviously intended by CERCLA, the word ordinarily
means “[t]o conduct the affairs of; manage: operate a busi-
ness.” American Heritage Dictionary, supra, at 1268; see
also Webster’s New International Dictionary, supra, at 1707
(“to manage”). So, under CERCLA, an operator is simply
someone who directs the workings of, manages, or conducts
the affairs of a facility. To sharpen the deﬁnition for pur-
poses of CERCLA’s concern with environmental contamina-
tion, an operator must manage, direct, or conduct operations
speciﬁcally related to pollution, that is, operations having

12 See Oswald 257 (“There are . . . instances . . . in which the parent
has not sufﬁciently overstepped the bounds of corporate separateness to
warrant piercing, yet is involved enough in the facility’s activities that it
should be held liable as an operator.
Imagine, for example, a parent who
strictly observed corporate formalities, avoided intertwining ofﬁcers and
directors, and adequately capitalized its subsidiary, yet provided active,
daily supervision and control over hazardous waste disposal activities of
the subsidiary. Such a parent should not escape liability just because its
activities do not justify a piercing of the subsidiary’s veil”).