Opinion ID: 652885
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: cercla liability for the threat of future contamination

Text: 20 The district court concluded that the Authority had failed to establish that the Tonolli site posed any future threat of contamination to the Authority's wells. It therefore held that the Authority was not entitled to recover for the costs of procuring an alternative water supply or for continuously treating its existing supply. More fundamentally, in light of its subsidiary factual findings, the court determined that the Tonolli site was hydrogeologically isolated from the Authority's water production wells so that contamination on the Tonolli property would not migrate to the Authority's water supply. The Authority challenges this factual conclusion, contending that the evidence adduced at trial overwhelmingly demonstrated that heavy use of the Authority's wells would draw contamination from the Tonolli site. The Authority submits that the long-term pumping test it conducted, the AGES test, convincingly and unassailably established that there is a hydrogeological connection between the Tonolli site and its production wells and hence that the Tonolli site poses a threat of future contamination to the Authority's water. In short, the Authority submits that the district court's factual findings are clearly erroneous. We disagree. 21 In our view, the district court's factual determinations are well-supported by the record such that we are not left with the definite and firm conviction that a mistake has been committed. United States v. United States Gypsum Co., 333 U.S. 364, 395, 68 S.Ct. 525, 542, 92 L.Ed. 746 (1948). The district court was faced in this case with extensive expert testimony offering conflicting interpretations of the reliability of the Authority's scientific study and the data it produced. The trial was thus a battle of the experts at the end of which the district court credited the interpretation of Tonolli Canada's expert rather than that of the Authority. Given that Tonolli Canada's expert provided a reasonable explanation of the scientific data from the AGES study, we refuse to disturb the district court's factual conclusions because it is well-established that [w]here there are two permissible views of the evidence, the factfinder's choice between them cannot be clearly erroneous. Anderson v. Bessemer City, N.C., 470 U.S. 564, 574, 105 S.Ct. 1504, 1511, 84 L.Ed.2d 518 (1985). See also Mendes-Silva v. United States, 980 F.2d 1482, 1487 (D.C.Cir.1993) (in a battle of the experts, the factfinder decide[s] the victor).
22 The dispute between Tonolli Canada and the Authority principally revolves around the proper interpretation of the results of the AGES test. In July, 1987, the Authority engaged an engineering firm to perform a long-term pumping test designed to determine whether contamination from the Tonolli property could affect the Authority's groundwater supply. The Authority then knew (as has been stipulated in this case) that the Authority's underground water supply was upgradient to the Tonolli site, i.e., the underground area from which the Authority's wells draw their water is higher than the groundwater area underneath the Tonolli site. Thus, under normal conditions the groundwater does not flow from the Tonolli site toward the Authority's wells. The Authority undertook the AGES study to see if long-term, continuous pumping of the Authority's wells would create a reversal of this normal trend such that contamination from the Tonolli site could infiltrate the Authority's water supply. 23 The AGES study was conducted over a 72-hour period. The AGES consultants installed three monitoring wells between the Tonolli site and the Authority's supply wells. The test also utilized two previously installed monitoring wells located between the Authority's production wells and the Tonolli site. For the 72-hour period, the Authority pumped its production wells at full capacity and the consultants then took two measurements: 1) the groundwater levels in the Tonolli monitoring wells, and 2) the water quality in the Authority's production and monitoring wells. According to the Authority, the theory behind this procedure was that if the water level of the Tonolli monitoring wells dropped during the test, it would tend to prove that long-term and full-scale pumping effected a reversal in groundwater direction. Moreover, if the Authority detected higher levels of contaminants in its wells after the full-scale pumping, this, according to the Authority, would tend to prove that there was a groundwater reversal because the contaminants could have come from the Tonolli site. 24 At the end of the 72 hours of full-scale pumping there was a drop in two of the Tonolli monitoring wells. The water level in one well dropped by 1.74 feet; in another monitoring well, the water level fell by 1.26 feet. In addition, slightly higher levels of lead and volatile organic compounds (VOCs) were detected after the test. The Authority thus argues that the AGES study demonstrated that at some point during the pumping test, the groundwater direction reversed. Dr. Fungaroli, the geologist in charge of the AGES test and the plaintiff's expert witness, testified that based on the results of the AGES study, he believed that the Tonolli site posed a threat of future contamination to the Authority's current water source.
25 The district court's findings and conclusions are supported by the testimony of the defendant's expert, Dr. Earl, a hydrogeologist. At the outset, Earl testified that the decreases in water levels in the AGES report were minimal given the scale of the pumping test. Earl testified that the drops in the two monitoring wells after the AGES pumping test may not have been caused by the pumping and do not necessarily suggest that there was a groundwater reversal. Rather, according to Earl, the water level drops could have been caused by a wide variety of factors other than a reversal in groundwater direction. Earl related that there is no way to tell from the AGES study that the water drops were in fact caused by a reversal in groundwater flow and not by these other potential forces. 26 Earl detailed a number of factors that could account for the drop in the monitoring wells. For example, he testified that seasonal changes or earth tides could have resulted in the water decreases. Earl further testified that changes in sunlight, passage of a cold or warm front, groundwater recharge events (i.e., proximity to streams or lakes where levels are rising and falling), as well as man-made influences such as nearby pumping wells and passing railroad trains, could have caused the water levels to drop as they did. In addition, he stated that some combination of those forces also may have been responsible for the drop in the monitoring wells. 27 Earl also criticized the AGES study for not observing and recording the trend in water levels in the wells before conducting the pumping test. He stated that the potential causes for the water level decreases that he identified would have been reflected in data about the trend of the wells' water levels before the test. Earl testified that without this pre-pumping data, there is no way to discern whether it was the pumping test or other factors which caused the drops in the water levels of the monitoring wells. Hence, according to Earl, the AGES pumping test results are inconclusive. 28 Earl's testimony raised questions about why the water level dropped, questions that, in his view, could have been answered had the AGES study investigated the pre-pumping water level trends in the monitoring wells. In this way, Earl's testimony provided substantial support for the district court's conclusion that the Authority had not established by a preponderance of the evidence that the pumping during the AGES test (rather than other factors) caused the water level decreases. The fact that Earl himself did not establish what caused the water levels to drop is inconsequential since Tonolli Canada, as a defendant, did not have the burden of showing the exact cause of the drop in water levels. That burden was on the Authority. 29 In addition to the questions Earl raised about the conclusiveness of the AGES study, his testimony also provided affirmative support for the district court's conclusion that the Tonolli site and the Authority's wells are hydrogeologically isolated. Based on the data used in the AGES study as well as a topographical survey of the area under the Tonolli site conducted by Tonolli Canada, Earl concluded that there is a groundwater divide separating the Tonolli site and the Authority's wells. Earl also testified that because the Authority's wells draw their water from a very deep aquifer which is in a discharge zone, the Authority's wells cannot be contaminated from activity occurring at the surface level. 30 Earl also raised questions about the Authority's interpretations of the water quality data gleaned from the AGES study. Specifically, Earl testified that there was no reason to believe that the VOCs and lead detected in the wells after the AGES test came from the Tonolli site. Earl pointed to other possible sources, such as sediments from nearby Tippets Pond and Lake Hauto, which contain lead as demonstrated by samples taken by Tonolli Canada, and which serve as recharge sources for the aquifer that supplies water for the Authority's wells. Moreover, Earl explained that because there were VOC's present in the wells before the pumping test even began, there clearly is an upgradient source of VOCs which most likely was the source of the additional VOCs during the full-scale pumping during the AGES test. 31 We are satisfied that Earl's testimony regarding the water quality data adequately supports the district court's finding that the lead and the higher levels of VOC's did not come from the Tonolli site. 6 In addition, Earl's testimony as to the hydrogeological separation of the Tonolli site also supports the district court's findings regarding the water quality data, because the hydrogeological separation of the Authority's wells and the Tonolli site means, by definition, that the higher level of contaminants could not have come from the Tonolli site. 7
32 We hold that the district court's factual finding that the Tonolli site and the Authority's wells are hydrogeologically isolated is not clearly erroneous. 8 We thus uphold the district court's conclusion that the Authority did not sufficiently demonstrate, through the AGES test, that the Tonolli site poses any threat of contamination to the Authority's water supply.