The US Supreme Court handed BP unit Atlantic Richfield a victory on 20 April, making it harder for Montana landowners to seek a more-extensive cleanup of a hazardous waste site than the federal government had ordered.
In a case involving the Environmental Protection Agency’s Superfund program responsible for cleaning up certain toxic waste sites, the justices threw out a state court decision that had allowed the claims for restoration damages by the private landowners at Atlantic Richfield’s former Anaconda copper smelter in western Montana to proceed to trial.
In the 7–2 ruling authored by conservative Chief Justice John Roberts, the court decided that, under the law governing Superfund sites, the property owners needed the EPA’s approval before undertaking restoration of their own contaminated land.
That system ensures the “careful development of a single EPA-led cleanup effort rather than tens of thousands of competing individual ones,” Roberts wrote.
In dissent, Justice Neil Gorsuch, joined by fellow conservative Justice Clarence Thomas, denounced the implication that property owners “cannot be trusted to clean up their lands without causing trouble.”
The case hinged on the scope of the Superfund law. The Superfund program, started in 1980, is intended to identify contaminated sites and ensure that those responsible for the pollution pay for the hazardous waste cleanup. It has been criticized over the years for slow cleanup efforts.