Activists Reject New Epa Challenge To Superfund Financial Rules Suit

摘要

Environmentalists are rejecting yet another EPA challenge to their efforts to force the agency through a lawsuit to issue decades-delayed Superfund financial assurance rules, arguing government lawyers are misinterpreting two recent appellate court rulings the agency claims bolsters its argument that the activist suit is time-barred. The lawsuit is significant because environmentalists believe the rules would expand EPA's approach to dealing with waste management problems and help assure environmental cleanup funding in the face of industrial bankruptcies and the expiration of Superfund taxes. But, in a brief the Department of Justice (DOJ) filed on behalf of EPA in the case Sierra Club et al. v. Johnson late last month, DOJ argues that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit's recent decisions in the cases Marley v. United States and Rouse v. Dep 't of State bolster its argument that the environmentalists' suit is prohibited by the Superfund law's statute of limitations and that the U.S. District Court for Northern California should therefore dismiss the case without a trial.