April 19, 2016 Article
David Van Slyke Authors Blog for American College of Environmental Lawyers
Show Me the (Big) Money - CERCLA Financial Assurance in the Era of Megasites
In the CERCLA world, the low hanging fruit has largely been picked. Long gone are the days of the run-of-the-mill $3M RI/FS leading up to a $30M RD/RA. We are getting to the tough stuff now – the megasites – and all the difficult issues related to PRP involvement in RD/RA (whether via consent decree settlement or compliance with a UAO) are on steroids.
One of those more difficult issues in the context of multi-party megasites relates to financial assurance (“FA”) requirements in RD/RA UAOs and consent decrees. The 29-page April 2015 EPA FA Guidance, while helpful on some levels, is remarkably thin (2 paragraphs) when it comes to dealing with multi-party sites....