New Yorkers like to think their city is the biggest and baddest, and now there's another reason for those sobriquets: last month, the former Wolff-Alport Chemical Company site - less than 1,000 feet from a public middle school and a private day care center- earned the...
Year: 2014
Largest Environmental Settlement in History Reached in Kerr-McGee Case
In a triumph of environmental responsibility and justice over corporate attempts to disclaim environmental liabilities, the former Kerr-McGee Corporation has been ordered to clean up after itself.Since its founding in 1929, Kerr-McGee engaged in a number of highly...
Key Limits Imposed on State Authority to Order RCRA Corrective Action Under a Treatment, Storage or Disposal Facility Permit
Can a party who is not the holder of a certain environmental permit be required to perform the obligations set out in that permit? The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation thought so, and argued as much in the case of a property owner who had...
Expanded Clean Water Act Jurisdiction could be Coming ‘Round the River Bend
How easily can a significant expansion in jurisdiction be called just a "clarification" of existing jurisdiction? On April 21, 2014, the United States Environmental Protection Agency and the Army Corps of Engineers published a proposed rule that promises to...
Court Determines that All Remediation at a Superfund Site Constitutes One “Remedial Action”
How many remediation angels can dance on a single remediation pinhead? In the recent NL Industries v. ACF Industries ruling, a federal judge in the Western District of New York decided that, for the purposes of CERCLA cost recovery and declaratory judgment claims, all...
New Rules Governing Hazardous Waste Storage in New York City are Coming Into Effect: Will Your Facility be Ready?
In the wake of Hurricane Sandy, the New York City Council passed a flurry of laws designed to increase the resiliency of the City during future storm events. One of these laws, Local Law 143, requires operators of facilities that store hazardous substances to file...
Supreme Court Declines to Weigh in on CERCLA Subrogation Case
Sometimes the Supreme Court's silence can be just as powerful as a decision. Or as James Joyce said about "absence" - it's the "highest form of presence."The effect of the Court's declining to grant certiorari in the case of Chubb Custom Insurance Company v. Space...
A.G. Scheiderman and Assemblyman Sweeney Announce Legislation to Curb Pint Sized Pollutant that Poses Big Problem for New York
Perhaps you've heard of the "Great Pacific Garbage Patch," a "plastic soup" of floating waste in the Pacific purportedly twice the size of the United States, but did you know that similar plastic pollution has been documented throughout the Great Lakes? Attorney...
Community Struggling to Recover from Chemical Spill in West Virginia
For much of West Virginia, the start of the New Year brought anything but "good tidings."On January 9, 2014, approximately 10,000 gallons of the hazardous chemical substance 4-methylcyclohexane methanol ("MCHM") leaked from a storage tank and flowed into the Elk...
Environmental Disaster Highlights the Need for TSCA Reform
Love Canal, New York; Cuyahoga River, Ohio; Times Beach, Missouri; Hopewell, Virginia; Three Mile Island, Pennsylvania. These are the sites of some of the worst environmental contamination in our nation's history. Each of these disasters drew significant public...