Given the billions of dollars that have been spent at federal Superfund sites, and the billions still to come, it is fascinating how relatively little attention has been devoted to the case of Atlantic Richfield Company (ARCO) v Christian recently argued in the U.S. Supreme Court. Is it because there might not yet be a final judgment in the Montana court case? Or because preemption is an insufficiently dramatic attention-grabbing legal issue? Or because relatively few amicus briefs were filed? Or are people just plain tired of CERCLA?
To the last question, certainly environmental lawyers and engineers are not so fatigued! Indeed, the Christian case raises some interesting issues. If the Court reaches the merits rather than remands the case for lack of a final judgment, resolution of the issues could impact clean-up cases and the scope of remediation efforts all over the U.S., as well as who is a “potentially responsible party” under CERCLA, and potentially also impact federal-state relations and conflicts in other areas of law.
In 1980—the year that CERCLA was enacted—the Anaconda Smelter ceased its copper refining operations. However, because Anaconda’s smokestacks had emitted arsenic and lead across five nearby towns, 20,000 acres and thousands of homes, in 1983 EPA placed the area on its list of Superfund sites. While ARCO (the then-owner of the smelter) was identified as the lead Potentially Responsible Party (PRP), and has since spent $450 million in carrying out the EPA’s remediation plan, downwind landowners wanted more cleanup work done on their lands than what EPA had ordered. They thus sued ARCO in state court 11 years ago.
In its December 29, 2017 decision, the Montana Supreme Court allowed plaintiffs to bring state law claims for more clean-up at federally designated sites of ongoing remediation. The U.S. Supreme Court granted certiorari in June 2019. Two of the granted issues are particularly interesting and potentially far-reaching: 1) Is a private (downwind) landowner at a Superfund site a PRP who must first get EPA’s approval for remedial action, even if that landowner has not been ordered to pay for a cleanup—in other words, who really is “responsible” under CERCLA? And 2) Does CERCLA explicitly or implicitly preempt or otherwise bar state common law claims for restoration, if such claims seek cleanup remedies at odds with (i.e. exceeding) EPA-ordered remedies?
Public Citizen and a group of 15 states (led by Virginia) filed amicus briefs in support of the Montana landowners and the Montana court decision; the Solicitor General and the Chamber of Commerce (with a group of other trade groups) supported ARCO. Arguments of statutory interpretation and federal-state sovereignty were front and center in the briefs.
The case was orally argued on December 3, 2019. Some of the Justices seemed concerned with precluding the claim in light of CERCLA’s text which allows for states to have a meaningful role in the remediation of hazardous sites. Other Justices seemed sympathetic to EPA and ARCO’s concerns that plaintiffs’ desired remediation might worsen groundwater quality by releasing toxins in the soil. And the Solicitor General’s representative spent much of his time defending the assertion that the plaintiff landowners should be treated as PRPs.
Ultimately, should the Court reach the merits, the Justices appeared to be trying to devise a way for the states to maintain an active role in CERCLA remediations without allowing landowners to “interfere” with EPA’s cleanup plan. Coincidentally, in an ACOEL small world moment, because Vermont and Maine were part of the 15-state amicus team, ACOEL members Pat Parenteau (VT) and Jeff Thaler (Maine) were each interviewed after the oral argument by the same news reporter.
Fortunately, they did not contradict each other, or have to say “sorry” when the article came out.
