Opinion ID: 2552631
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The legislative history behind subsection.822(a) supports a private cause of action.

Text: The original version of AS 46.03.822, enacted in 1972, created a cause of action imposing strict liability on polluters who damaged private property: To the extent not otherwise preempted by federal law, a person owning or having control over a hazardous substance which enters in or upon the waters, surface or subsurface lands of the state is strictly liable, without regard to fault, for the damages to persons or property, public or private, caused by the entry .... [3] The act defined damages to include injury to or loss of persons or property, real or personal, loss of income, loss of the means of producing income, or the loss of an economic benefit. [4] A separate provision, AS 46.03.870, specified that causes of action under AS 46.03 inure solely to and are for the benefit of the state [e]xcept as provided under AS 46.03.822-46.03.828, implying that those sections provide for private causes of action. [5] In 1989 the legislature amended section.822 to strengthen the State's ability to obtain cleanup of hazardous substance spill sites. [6] The amendments explicitly allowed the state and municipalities to recover damages, including cleanup and remediation costs, under the strict liability language of subsection .822(a): Notwithstanding any other provision or rule of law and subject only to the defenses set out in (b) of this section[,] ... the following persons are strictly liable, jointly and severally, for damages to persons or property, whether public or private, including damage to the natural resources of the state or a municipality, and for the costs of response, containment, removal, or remedial action incurred by the state or a municipality, resulting from an unpermitted release of a hazardous substance .... .... (2) the owner and the operator of a vessel or facility from which there is a release ... of a hazardous substance[.] [7] Legislative history indicates that this amendment was modeled after the Federal Comprehensive Environmental Response Compensation and Liability Act (CERCLA), [8] which Congress enacted in 1980. [9] In 1991 the legislature passed a number of amendments to AS 46.03.822. First, it amended subsection .822(a) to add villages to the governmental entities that could recover cleanup and remediation costs. [10] In so doing, the legislature retained the public or private damages language quoted above. [11] Later in the same session, the legislature moved the damages language from subsection.822(a) to a new subsection, .822(k), but did not change its content. [12] In each of the foregoing amendments, the legislature also retained AS 46.03.824, a provision defining damages to include injuries to persons or property, real or personal, and loss of income. [13] The legislature likewise retained the original version of AS 46.03.870, which, as mentioned above, specifically provides that causes of action under section .822 are not limited to the state. Moreover, every version of section .822 has subjected polluters of either private or public property to joint and several strict liability. In sum, this history strongly suggests that the legislature originally contemplated a private cause of action against parties who release hazardous substances and that it never repealed that cause of action. It would be incongruous for the legislature to create strict liability for damage to private land without providing a way for private parties to get compensation for that damage.