Lawsuit Targets EPA Over Lack of Superfund Financial Assurance Rules

Date: March 24, 2008
Source: Waste Business Journal -News Room

Environmentalists have recently filed a lawsuit to force the EPA to issue Superfund financial assurance rules as required but never promulgated by the agency in the 22 years since it was supposed to have been done. Earthjustice on behalf of the Sierra Club and other groups filed their suit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. According to the brief, the bankruptcies of companies like Asarco, the century-old mining giant estimated to be liable for more than $1 billion in environmental cleanup, along with the expiration of the Superfund taxes on industry, underscore the need for the financial assurances as a means of ensuring cleanup costs are not shifted onto citizens.

The EPA has had difficulty developing the rules in part because of the legal requirements to issue them on a sector-by-sector basis. Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA) introduced legislation to force the EPA to craft rules but Congress has yet to act on it. Similarly, Rep. Nick Rahall (D-WV) introduced H.R. 2262 that includes provisions mandating that the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and the Forrest Service require that companies mining on federal lands maintain financial assurances. The environmentalists' CERCLA suit seeks to put the financial assurances on par with those under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) and seeks to address electric utilities, metal finishers, solvent and battery recyclers and wood treatment facilities and other industries.