This is not new. I remember discussing this with a lawyer a few years back and he defended the opinion that people are civilly responsible for their acts even if they are legal. I said there has to be a statute of limitations and it makes more sense that the responsibility passes with the property but he disagreed. I remember reading people will not buy any property which once was a gas station, dry cleaners or any other place where chemicals were used because the liability for cleanup is just astronomical.
At the same time a dump of WWI chemical weapons was found in a DC neighborhood but the army is immune from the regulations which apply to the rest of mortals. :rolleyes:
This is a Superfund action, right? Superfund is a monster and can pull people like this into its cogs and chew them up.
I clipped an article from the early '90s that detailed some poor schmuck’s battle against government lawyers because of Superfund.
In that case, the EPA had designated a municipal landfill as a Superfund site needing cleanup. EPA’s goal is to drag as many people into the case as “Potentially Responsible Parties.” The more PRPs, the more chance to get the $$ to clean up the site.
Well, some guy had a local trash hauling/recycling business, and as part of his business he purchased three trucks and some other items from another company.
Unbeknownst to him, the previous owner of the trucks had used them to haul materials to the landfill. (Which was a perfectly legal landfill, operated in a legal manner.) In fact, the landfill had been closed 2 years before the guy bought the trucks. He had never taken as much as one paper cup to that landfill.
But because of his ownership of the trucks, EPA included him as a PRP and went after him with a vengeance. He ended up having to pay out the nose and face years of legal wrangling. (Oh, and the government’s cost to investigate the site and round up PRPs?–Billed to the PRPs. To me, that’s like having to pay for the bullet used by the firing squad.)
And with all this money being sucked out of the locals (mostly enriching the lawyers), as of the date of the article not one ounce of contaminated dirt had been removed from the site.
So, these old geezers in California don’t really realize what is about to hit them. And I feel very, very, sorry for them.
All DOD departments are required to comply with EPA, state and local regulations.
In addition they have their own set of environmental regulations which are far more stringent than what civilian businesses are required by EPA to follow.
The army has the 200-1 (there’s MY cite, also I know because I run several projects which assist DOD branches in proper care and disposal, and I have counterparts all over the US and furrin bases that run the same type of contracts), it’s based upon EPA, but requires more in depth military crap (that’s a technical term :)).
It’s true that they weren’t required to in the past. But whether or not they are currently caring for old WWII superfund sites isn’t that the army is trying to get out of paying for it, it’s the red tape that is the superfund program.
Also, environmental funding is very tight right now, thanks to the recent war in Iraq.