Source: http://www.acoel.org/?tag=/CERCLA
Timestamp: 2019-04-24 00:08:20+00:00

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Earlier this year, I posted in this blog a discussion of EPA’s 35 year – and still unfinished – journey toward full implementation of the financial assurance (“FA”) mandate of CERCLA Section 108(b). Section 108(b) obligates EPA to identify “classes of facilities” that will be required to demonstrate financial ability to respond to future releases of hazardous substances and to promulgate rules establishing those FA requirements. Inexplicably, Section 108(b) remained dormant for 28 years. Litigation initiated by NGOs in 2009 and 2010 prompted the agency to identify the hardrock mining and several other industries as priority targets for regulation. The task of developing the FA requirements for those industries, however, remained a work-in-progress.
Ever vigilant, environmental advocacy groups filed a Petition for Writ of Mandamus in August 2014 taking EPA to task for its delays and inaction. The theme of the litigation is that (1) Section 108(b) is a critical component of CERCLA’s overall scheme, (2) EPA’s failure to issue FA rules has resulted in cleanup delays, funding shortfalls and increased public health risks, and (3) EPA’s inaction cannot be justified by competing priorities within the agency. In May of this year, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals issued an order requiring EPA to expedite implementation of Section 108(b) to the greatest extent possible, update its rulemaking schedule for the identified industries, and disclose to the litigants the regulatory “framework” for the hardrock mining industry, which EPA acknowledged had been completed. EPA’s website suggests that it will publish the hardrock mining rule in August 2016.
In short—the more things change, the more they stay the same. Perhaps the low priority assigned to this CERCLA provision suggests that the cleanup response track-record of even the priority industries may not justify a need to regulate under Section 108(b) - a process that will involve complex issues with significant financial consequences. Nevertheless, Section 108(b) remains the law of the land. Congress must either follow-through with its periodic efforts to amend Section 108(b) or EPA must finish this long journey. No benefit inures to the public, affected industries or the agency from the existing uncertainties and delays.
The Guidance does not address future Section 108(b) requirements.
It is suggested that the EPA Regions have flexibility to include or exclude certain FA mechanisms at specific sites, BUT headquarters consultation and approval is often necessary.
The financial test and corporate guaranty mechanisms are perceived by EPA as having a higher risk of not achieving FA objectives and imposing increased administrative burdens on the Agency; therefore, it is suggested that those mechanisms should be used with caution.
The Guidance recognizes the complications arising at sites involving numerous, dissimilar PRPs, with a preference for requiring jointly-funded versus separate FA mechanisms.
The Guidance emphasizes the need for agency diligence in the ongoing evaluation of site conditions and costs, with increases in the initial FA amount to be required as appropriate.
Practical considerations for evaluating the financial test and guaranty FA options are addressed in an appendix.
Notwithstanding suggestions of flexibility in the use of FA tools on a site-by-site basis, this comprehensive new guidance does not appear to include much good news for the settling PRP. In fact, EPA’s stated concerns on the use of the financial test, corporate guaranty and insurance policy FA mechanisms could further complicate an already contentious issue in CERCLA settlement negotiations. What impact the guidance may have on FA negotiations as new sites arise, of course, remains to be seen.
Much of my legal work deals with hazardous material remediations driven by CERCLA or state equivalents. The allocation of these costs among liable parties, in court or out, is generally conceded to be expensive and ultimately unsatisfying to most of them. I never thought I would see it in another area of environmental law but now I have.
Dams are regulated in my state by the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection. It is a big job. Most of our lakes and ponds are dammed streams or rivers. At one point New Jersey had 196 dams where a failure might result in probable loss of life and/or extensive property damage. 50 of these need repairs at an estimated cost in excess of $33 million. There were also another 396 dams where failure might result in significant property damage. 317 are in need of repair to bring them up to state standards at a cost in excess of $126 million. Who pays for the necessary repairs to these dams and how?
A case decided by our intermediate appellate court on January 2nd of this year answers this question in a most CERCLA-like way. In New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection v. Alloway Township the Appellate Division interpreted provisions of the Safe Dam Act (N.J.S.A. 58:4-1 to 4-14). This Act “casts a ‘broad net’ of liability … so that its remedial purpose … is served” by imposing “significant obligations” on the owner or person having control of a reservoir or dam. At issue in this case was a privately owned lake created by an earthen dam that now has township road on top which is supported by a county bridge and culverts that are part of the dam.
The New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (“NJDEP”) brought an action against the person owning the property below the lake and the dam, the township that maintained the road on the dam and the county that maintained portions of the dam. The court held “there are four classes of people who are subject to the statute: (1) dam owners; (2) reservoir owners; (3) those who control the dam; and (4) those who control the reservoir. It follows that if a party fits into any one of those categories, the [NJDEP] may seek enforcement of the SDA against that person.” All the parties fell into at least one of those classes.
The Appellate Division also blessed the allocation of liability made below. There, the judge, sitting in the Chancery Division - General Equity Part, made an equitable allocation of the costs of compliance: sixty-five percent to the County, twenty-five percent to the property owner, and ten percent to the Township.
What – equitable allocation in another environmental program? Cheer up CERCLA lawyers. Our skills may be useful in dam regulatory litigation.
Brownfields Redevelopment – a New Trust Mechanism to the Rescue?
Environmental response trusts created as a result of corporate bankruptcies demonstrate that workable mechanisms exist to protect against future environmental liability. This prompts the question: Can this concept be expanded and become an official amendment to CERCLA, or a separate Brownfields law?
The Revitalizing Auto Communities Environmental Response Trust (“RACER Trust”), the largest response trust every created, owns, manages and remediates the former holdings of General Motors. It includes 89 properties, 60 of which needed environmental remediation, with over $640 million provided to RACER Trust, nearly $500 million of that designated to address environmental liability. The RACER Trust holds the liability for onsite contamination when it sells a property as long as the new owner allows the remediation work to continue. This liability shield also travels with the land, providing security to future purchasers with regard to unexpected contamination that could otherwise cost thousands or millions of dollars. What is unique about this and other trusts, is the cooperative nature which the Trustees and the regulatory agencies have displayed in addressing contamination and remedial activities, very different than the standard contentious approach which routinely exist at sites today.
There have been several legislative proposals in the 113th Congress to provide fixes to CERCLA, the cornerstone law of environmental remediation. The proposed legislation, however, is more focused on transferring authority over clean-up of sites to the states and implementing credit for state contributions to the remediation. In its testimony to the House Energy and Commerce Committee last May, EPA’s Office of Solid Waste and Emergency Response laid out the reasons for its opposition to many of the legislative proposals. The main points of concern are over the potential delays, increased administrative and litigation costs, and conflicting clean-up authority at sites.
But instead of legislation that could result in further slowing down an already protracted process, what about creating opportunities and enticements for development of contaminated properties? Whether under the CERCLA regime, or through the Brownfields program, there are ways to create environmental liability shields that would restore these properties to useful status, providing industry and jobs for the surrounding communities. In 2007, a nascent proposal to address this issue was developed. The draft legislation called for the creation of the Recovered Property Protection and Assurance Trust or R-PAT for transfer of contaminated properties and their associated environmental liabilities to a quasi-governmental trust. The R-PAT concept would have required a current property owner to pay a significant fee in order to place the land in the trust, and then cleaned up and conveyed, liability-free, to a purchaser. For various reasons, including the quasi-governmental nature of the trust and the floundering economy, the proposal was a non-starter.
However, given the dearth of other viable proposals, perhaps it is time to re-examine the trust concept and how contaminated properties can be best put back to profitable use. If we really want to streamline CERCLA or improve the Brownfields program, then let’s talk about how to get the land back into use, how to remove the time consuming and wasteful antagonism surrounding remediation and how to provide bullet-proof shields for bona fide purchasers now and in the future.
In Bernstein v. Bankert, the Seventh Circuit follows the Second, Third, Eighth, and Eleventh Circuits in holding a CERCLA plaintiff with a contribution claim under Section 113(f) does not have a cost recovery claim under Section 107. But when does a signatory to an administrative order on consent (AOC) have a contribution claim?
Plaintiffs incurred response costs arising out of two administrative orders on consent (AOC). The first AOC resulted in an engineering evaluation and cost analysis of removal options. The second AOC resulted in implementation of the selected removal action.
The first AOC was carried out to its completion. Completion of the second AOC was conditioned, however, upon the “complete and satisfactory performance by Respondents of their obligations under this Order” and issuance of a Notice of Completion by EPA, and neither condition had occurred at the time of the summary judgment.
The district court held plaintiffs could only sue in contribution and the limitations period had run on claims under both AOCs.
There was no discussion of what might happen if the second AOC was completed during the course of the litigation so all CERCLA lawyers should stay tuned.
On October 9, 2012, the Supreme Court denied a petition for certiorari in Solutia, Inc v. McWane, Inc., declining to further clarify the question raised and expressly left unanswered in footnote six of the Court’s opinion in United States v. Atlantic Research Corp., 551 U.S. 128 (2007). The issue is what section of CERCLA provides private parties with the authority to recover their costs at Superfund sites from other “covered persons” liable under the statute — Section 107(a) or Section 113(f). The choice is important because different rules of liability and different statutes of limitation apply to contribution and cost recovery claims. In Solutia, the Eleventh Circuit ruled that a party subject to a consent decree is limited to a claim for contribution under Section 113(f) and does not also have a claim for cost recovery under Section 107(a).
That explanation left unanswered the question of what section of the statute applies in the common situation in which parties enter into settlements or sign consent decrees, agreeing to perform work. Those parties have a right to contribution under Section 113(f), but they also incur their own cost in cleaning up a site. In footnote 6 in the Atlantic Research opinion, the Court expressly declined to decide that question (“We do not decide whether these compelled costs of response are recoverable under §113(f), §107(a), or both.”).
Litigation of that unanswered question followed in the lower courts. The Eleventh Circuit in Solutia referenced decisions in the Second (Niagara Mohawk Power Corp. v. Chevron U.S.A., Inc., 596 F.3d 112 (2d Cir. 2010)), Third (Agere Sys., Inc. v. Advanced Envtl. Tech. Corp., 602 F.3d 204 (3d Cir. 2010)) and Eighth (Morrison Enter., LLC v. Dravo Corp., 638 F.3d 594 (8th Cir. 2011)) Circuit Courts of Appeals to decide that parties settling their CERCLA liability with government agencies are limited to Section 113(f) contribution claims, even though they incur their own costs of response in complying with the settlement (“[w]e agree with our sister circuits that we must deny the availability of a §107(a) remedy under these circumstances in order [ ] ‘[t]o ensure the continued vitality of the precise and limited right to contribution”).
The Supreme Court’s denial of petition for certiorari in Solutia is not necessarily the final word on the long running saga of the interplay between Sections 107(a) and 113(f). For example, it may be appropriate to limit a potentially responsible party to Section 113(f) contribution claims when it is subject to a consent decree, because a consent decree would generally be filed with the court accompanied by a complaint, be subject to public comment, resolve a party’s CERCLA liability to the government, and provide the party with contribution protection. The Third Circuit in Agere found that the contribution protection granted to plaintiffs under a consent decree would allow plaintiffs complete recovery under §107(a), while at the same time shielding those plaintiffs from a contribution counterclaim. This would be a “perverse result,” as the plaintiffs had stipulated that they were responsible for a significant portion of contamination at the site. However, a different conclusion may be warranted under different facts. Indeed, the Court in Agere noted that it “need not decide the contours of the overlap postulated in Atlantic Research because, regardless of whether §107(a) and §113(f) remedies overlap at all, they cannot properly be seen to overlap here.” Thus, “the contours of the overlap” may be an issue to be decided another day.
“Let me be clear: EPA has never designated manure as a hazardous substance nor has the agency ever designated a farm a Superfund site and has no plans to do so.” So says Mathy Stanislaus, EPA Assistant Administrator, Office of Solid Waste and Emergency Response in testimony before the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Environment and Economy on June 27, 2012. The subject of the hearing was a bill called the “Superfund Common Sense Act” (H.R. 2997), which seeks to clarify that livestock manure is not a hazardous substance, pollutant or contaminant for purposes of CERCLA response authority and EPCRA emergency reporting.
With such an unequivocal statement of agency intent, is this latest Congressional effort to ensure a “common sense” interpretation of CERCLA and EPCRA with respect to livestock waste simply an attempt by agricultural interests to create an unnecessary and unwarranted regulatory “free pass,” or a prudent effort to provide needed certainty to the regulated community?
EPA’s position appears to be that the proposed codification of Superfund “common sense” is an uncalled-for response to the concerns being voiced. Beyond his broad statement of agency interpretation and intent, Mr. Stanislaus argues that EPA’s 2008 final rule exempting animal waste at certain farms from air emissions reporting under CERCLA section 103 and EPCRA Section 304 further demonstrates that the agency is already exercising common sense in its regulation of livestock waste.
Notwithstanding these assurances, however, Mr. Stanislaus admits that this final rule is currently under EPA review to address various issues being raised by a range of stakeholders. He also references EPA’s ongoing efforts to develop emissions estimating methodologies to better quantify air releases at livestock operations, presumably for future regulatory purposes.
Needless to say, such statements offer little comfort to the bill’s sponsors and regulated community, which are similarly discomforted by other statements of Mr. Stanislaus. For example, Mr. Stanislaus testified that the Act would prevent EPA from responding under its CERCLA authority to “damaging” releases of hazardous substances associated with manure. Also, Mr. Stanislaus voiced the agency’s concern that the bill’s “common sense” provisions would prevent EPA from using CERCLA to issue abatement orders in response to releases presenting a substantial danger to health or the environment.
Proponents of the bill state that the Act is not about whether manure should be regulated, as animal feeding and other farm operations are already adequately regulated under the Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act and state-specific authorities. Rather, the issue is whether CERCLA’s environmental response provisions and requirements were intended to or should apply to manure management. Although recognizing that CERCLA has specifically exempted only the “normal application of fertilizer” from its definition of “release,” proponents argue that such definitional language is not dispositive of congressional intent with respect to the general characterization of manure as a CERCLA hazardous substance. They also point out that EPA has never issued guidance on what constitutes “normal application of fertilizer,” leaving that exemption and broader CERCLA issues to be resolved by the courts and agency.
Opponents argue that because constituents of manure, such as ammonia and hydrogen sulfide, are hazardous substances, there is no legal or scientific basis to totally exempt manure from the regulatory scheme of CERCLA and EPCRA. They also challenge the notion that CERCLA authority is unnecessary or duplicative by identifying gaps in the reach of other federal environmental laws, including authority to deal with natural resource damages and the recovery of response costs.
Whatever side of the fence you may be on, it does seem inevitable that, if the legal and scientific issues being debated are not addressed by Congress, they will almost certainly be considered and resolved in some fashion by EPA, state agencies and the courts. In light of this -- and notwithstanding EPA’s protests that codification of Superfund “common sense” is unnecessary because agency common sense already prevails -- is a legislative approach to clarifying these important issues preferable to the uncertainties of future agency rule making and the inconsistencies inherent in judicial rulings?
CERCLA practitioners are familiar with the Eleventh Circuit’s decision in Solutia, Inc. v. McWane, Inc., 2012 WL 695007 (11th Cir. Mar. 6, 2012). The court of appeals decided that Solutia & Pharmacia, the plaintiff, was limited to a contribution action for costs incurred in cleaning up lead contamination. In so holding, the Eleventh Circuit agreed with three other circuits which have held that a person who enters an administrative or judicially approved settlement under Sections 106 or 107 of CERCLA are limited to a contribution claim under Section 113(f). See Morrison Enter., LLC v. Dravo Corp., 638 F.3d 594, 603 (8th Cir.2011); Agere Sys., Inc. v. Advanced Envtl. Tech. Corp., 602 F.3d 204, 229 (3d Cir.2010), and Niagara Mohawk Power Corp. v. Chevron U.S.A., Inc., 596 F.3d 112, 128 (2d Cir.2010).
While Solutia’s holding is significant, the decision provides an important reminder of the importance of foresight in the outcome of a claim. Let me explain.
Solutia & Pharmacia had entered into a Partial Consent Decree (PCD) in August 2003. The PCD referenced two areas of contamination, a PCB site and the “Anniston Lead Site.” Solutia and Pharmacia reserved their rights in the PCD to seek contribution from parties who could be proven to be liable for the Anniston Lead Site.
In 2005 EPA undermined Solutia & Pharmacia’s reserved contribution rights. It entered into settlements with a number of parties that provided contribution protection for lead-related cleanup costs. By motion, Solutia & Pharmacia protested EPA’s action. The trial court agreed and offered to suspend their obligations under the PCD because of EPA’s breach. By either inaction or conscious decision, Solution & Pharmacia declined the offer.
Solutia & Pharmacia argued that because lead contamination was excluded from the PCD, it had a Section 107 claim for its lead-related cleanup costs. Had the case turned just on the PCD, Solutia & Pharmacia would have been in the same position as Texas Instruments in Agere Sys., Inc. v. Advanced Envtl. Tech. Corp.—even though it signed one consent decree for which it was limited to a contribution action, costs it incurred unrelated to that consent decree could be pursued under Section 107(a).
The court of appeals, however, agreed with the district court that the Stipulation obligated Solutia & Pharmacia to clean up areas where PCBs were commingled with hazardous substances disposed of the defendants. Hence the PCD, which was “clarified” by the Stipulation, embraced costs associated with more than remediation of PCBs limiting Solution & Pharmacia to a contribution claim for those costs.
But what of the prohibition on admissibility of the Stipulation into evidence in any judicial proceeding that did not involve the United States? The prohibition is not self-executing; the Stipulation was admitted in the district court and relied on heavily. Solutia & Pharmacia apparently decided to wait until its reply brief to argue nonadmissibility. That was too late. Because admissibility of the Stipulation was not contested in Solutia & Pharmacia’s opening brief, the argument was waived, the court of appeals held.
The defendants in the action had been awarded summary judgment in the trial court because they had contribution protection from lead-related cleanup costs. However, Solutia & Pharmacia had spent $14 million in cleanup costs in areas that were not covered by the PCD. It filed a motion to alter or amend the judgment because the defendants had not sought a summary judgment with respect to these costs. The argument was rejected in the trial court because it had not been raised before entry of the summary judgment.
The burden is always on counsel to make and preserve arguments. This is as much a lesson from Solutia as its holding on the Section 107/113 issues.

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