Hundreds of U.S. communities stung by lawsuits seeking millions of dollars in hazardous waste cleanup costs are likely to take heart from a federal judge's ruling in a Connecticut case.
Judge Peter Dorsey of the U.S. District Court in New Haven ruled Thursday that municipalities and small businesses are not liable for Superfund cleanup costs at landfills that mixed their ordinary trash with toxic chemicals."It affects every community in the country," said Bill Butler, a Washington attorney.
The ruling applies only to communities or small businesses whose garbage did not contain any of the hazardous substances the Environmental Protection Agency specifically calls toxic in the nation's Superfund regulations.
The Superfund program was designed to get polluters to pay for creating the toxic dumps. But because many industrial polluters have tried to pass the costs onto local communities that sent their household waste to the same landfills, many communities are facing potentially bankrupting charges.
More than 450 municipalities in 13 states have been sued or threatened with suit by industrial polluters.
In New Jersey, for example, more than 108 cities have been sued.
Cities want liability based on the toxicity of the waste rather than volume, since municipal waste generally contains only small amounts of hazardous chemicals.
Dorsey said the fact that the waste contains items made with the listed toxins isn't the same as direct disposal of the raw chemicals.
His ruling came in a case involving cleanups at two of the nation's most polluted landfills: the Beacon Heights landfill in Beacon Falls, Conn., and Laurel Park landfill in Naugatuck Borough, Conn.