Consistency with national Continengcy Plan (NCP) in hazardous site cleanups by private and governmental parties. EcoShelf was retained by a corporate PRP to assist in the defense of an action for cost recovery brought by a municipality that conducted, and the state regulatory agency that was responsible for oversight, of a state-mandated closure of the mixed industrial and municipal solid waste landfill owned by the municipality. The municipality sought 50% contribution from the client. We reviewed the RI/FS and decision documents for the remedy selected by the municipal owner, and approved by the state oversight agency, and discovered several instances that indicated that the municipality failed to comply with the NCP, and the state oversight agency overlooked the municipality's inconsistencies. A key issue we noted was that the risk assessment required to be conducted as part of the decisional process by the NCP showed that the landfill posed no unacceptable risk to humans, and only a very limited area of very limited risk to only one of the five indicator animal species selected for study, under applicable USEPA and state regulations and guidance documents. Accordingly, consistency with the NCP would have required remediation of only the limited contamination, a remedy that incurred only about 0.5% of the total costs allegedly spent by the municipality in closing the landfill. The case was settled with our client responsible for only a fraction of the municipality's initial demand.

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Expert Testimony:: Case Briefts 1 2 3 4