(Supreme) Court Allows Recovery of Cleanup Costs

[Eugene]

Source: Associated Press

Court Allows Recovery of Cleanup Costs

By PETE YOST, Associated Press Writer

Monday, June 11, 2007

(06-11) 08:07 PDT WASHINGTON (AP) --

The Supreme Court strengthened a landmark anti-pollution
program Monday, enabling companies to recover costs when
they voluntarily clean up hazardous material.

In a unanimous ruling, the justices said the federal Superfund
law allows lawsuits to recover costs incurred in voluntary
cleanups. The Bush administration had argued otherwise.

The law is worded "so broadly as to sweep in virtually all
persons likely to incur cleanup costs" and the government's
interpretation "makes little textual sense," said the opinion
by Justice Clarence Thomas.

The case involves a company that contracted with the U.S.
government to retrofit rocket motors. Atlantic Research Corp.
voluntarily cleaned up pollution from rocket propellent that
seeped into the soil and groundwater.

The company then sued the government in an effort to recoup
some of the cleanup costs.

-snip-

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2007/06/11/national/w073608D07.DTL

[ret5hd]

1. So, a company gets paid to pollute, then gets paid to clean up...

the pollution. Am i missing something?

Why don't they NOT pollute or pay (handsomely) to clean it up?

[TechBear_Seattle]

2. Yes, you are missing something

:hi:

This is not a payment, this is a reimbursement, and it is given only if the company voluntarily cleans up after itself.

To pull numbers out of the air, assume the company that brought suit left a mess that would cost $50 million to clean up today. They can A) clean up after themselves voluntarily and get reimbursed for a large part of the clean up costs, or they can B) not clean up after themselves until the government sues them in 15 years to clean up after themselves at which point the cost has risen to $100 million, not including the cost of lawsuits brought by people poisoned by the mess, and get no reimbursement.

Reimbursing companies who clean up after themselves is not an ideal solution (which is that they don't make such a big mess to begin with) but it is an incentive to do the right thing.

[ret5hd]

3. I guess my solution would be...

to insist that the company doesn't cause the pollution to begin with, and if it does then it would be forced to clean it up at its own cost instead of the taxpayers who already paid the company once to do the job properly.

but i know i don't live in paradise.

[Eugene]

4. They could argue that the government was partly to blame.

A claim like that would have to be proven in court.
The Bush administration claimed that the government
was immune partly because the company didn't wait
for the government to order a cleanup.

Could the company have fixed the rocket motors
without polluting? That too will have to be determined
in court.

Whatever the merits of the lawsuit, today's ruling
said that the Bush administration could not immunize
the government from the law. That is a net plus.

[Kagemusha]

14. I don't believe the motors could be fixed without polluting at all.

That would just completely defy what little I know about rocket motors. As for the legal stuff, the Bush admin just got caught by an unpleasant little reality called The Law. Stuff that an earlier Congress passed, signed by an earlier President.

But anyway.

People on this thread are saying left and right that the environmental cleanup costs should be part of the bid. Well, the bidding process is controlled by the government. Perhaps there should be better provisions for the cleanup at the bidding stage; I mean, this job was done what, 26 years ago? Surely 26 years later there should be better procedures and better estimations of what something will cost. But, this should not be a unilateral process on the part of the companies. The government must cooperate as well. (Or put another way, I see no reason for this to just be a way to punish contractors. Contractors should have incentives not to pollute and the government should take responsibility for necessary pollution created as an unavoidable result of its contracted labor.)

[Judi Lynn]

5. US loses landmark Supreme Court environmental case

Source: AFP

US loses landmark Supreme Court environmental case
24 minutes ago

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The US government must foot the bill for environmental clean-up costs paid voluntarily by a company hired on a federal contract, the Supreme Court ruled Monday.

In a ruling that could expose the government to billions in claims, the nation's top court found in favor of Atlantic Research Corp., which in the 1980s built rocket motors for the Pentagon at an Arkansas facility.

Atlantic Research voluntarily cleaned up soil and water contamination caused by residue from burnt rocket fuel, and later sought to recover the costs from the government under a 1980 environmental law.

The government argued that it was only liable if a court had ordered the company to clean up the site, not if it had done the work on its own



Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070611/pl_afp/usjusticeenvironment

[northzax]

6. this is not neccesarily a good thing

i would rather have government contracting be done on a piece basis, rather than a whole. if someone can do it cheaper than the original contractor, that should be a consideration as well. I don't like contractors unilaterally exceeding the scope of their contract and billing more and more. heck, if they get paid for the clean up, why bother trying to avoid making a mess in the first place?

[Kagemusha]

10. I dare anyone to try retrofitting rocket motors clean & green.

I really would like to see someone manage that feat. I would be duly impressed.

[Journeyman]

12. No one's asking anyone to retrofit rocket motors clean and green. . .

I just want them to factor cleanup into their original bid, so when the job's finished none of us are stuck with the bill to clean up someone else's mess. And if they don't have such a stake in the process, and a commitment to clean it up before they ever begin, what incentive do they have to -- at the least -- try to be clean and green. Under your laissez faire approach, business can be conducted as recklessly as the company needs, with no regard whatsoever for anything other than profit, for after all -- as you succinctly point out in post 9 -- we're going to get stuck with cleanup whether they take care or not, since the environmental laws and the courts will eventually find the government responsible for the care of the land. All I, and anyone else on this thread that's opposed to the concept as we understand it from the article, all we want is for corporations to acknowledge the impact of their decisions, and to plan for the entire span of a project -- from r&d through cleanup and renewal -- and to factor all costs into the contract before they submit their first bid.

[Kagemusha]

13. Okay, here's my point then - it's not really someone else's mess.

This was done at our (our government's, our Pentagon's) request, under contract. It is not someone else's mess. It is our mess; we bought it, not after the fact, but before the fact.

My understanding from a decade ago is that the US was trying to help the former USSR out by having Soviet rockets decommissioned on US soil for the simple reason that the US at least was prepared and able to clean up the mess created by the process. It is an inherently highly dirty affair. There is no clean way to go about it. Doing it right means making a big mess. Even so, it was deemed better to offer to do the job and clean up the mess than have the Russians go, oh to hell with it, we'll just keep the stuff running as long as possible and hope we never have to use them. Anyway, the feasibility of that effort is not my point - it's just how I learned about the whole rocket decommissioning/retrofitting business being inherently dirty, even when done by the best experts in the world.

I don't know about some 500 other cases that weren't litigated. What I see in this case is that doing it right meant polluting the environment. Congress set up a regime for voluntary (read: rapid) cleanup which would then be reimbursed, and I presume the reimbursement would be in some kind of very fair way. Having followed the law and sought reimbursement, the federal government tried to back out and deny its obligations under the legal regime under which the company originally did the work in the first place, making a mess on behalf of, and at the behest of, Uncle Sam, i.e. us. It is our mess, the company cleaned it up on our behalf, and we should have the temerity to reimburse the company in good freaking grace. IMHO.

[Journeyman]

7. So Atlantic Research willfully contaminated its own property . . .

in the course of business, then claimed payment for cleaning up its own mess. Given the wide array of State and environmental agencies that backed Atlantic's claim, there's got to be more to it than this. But if the way I read it is true, that's quite a scam.

[sybylla]

8. That's how I see it

And that IS quite a scam. I hope I'm reading this wrong or there were extenuating circumstances that make this easier to digest and less of a dangerous precedent.

[mbperrin]

11. I'm quite sure they wouldn't overcharge, and just like

Halliburtin', are the salt of the earth, right? ;)

Can I get this deal? I'm a carpenter, so can I charge more at the end to clean up after myself, instead of assuming that's part of the job? WHATTA DEAL!

[Kagemusha]

9. A defense contractor actually cleans up contamination, and the world jeers

Oh woe is us, the government might actually have to pay for it because of laws Congress passed with eyes wide open and signed by a sitting President which are intended to lead to a cleaner America, rather than the usual state of affairs which is, no one spends a dime and defense related contamination simply remains in place indefinitely.

Environmental cleanup before a court orders it. What's the world coming to.