For those of you who cannot get enough of Superfund, I spoke at a Boston Bar Association panel on this subject yesterday about the implications of the Supreme Court’s Burlington Northern decision. Thanks to EPA Region I and Joanna Jerison, head of the Region I Superfund Legal Office, for being willing to speak on so obviously sore a subject. And thanks to Craig Campbell for participating on the panel as well.
As you can see from her presentation and mine, it appears that EPA and the private bar do not yet have a common understanding of the implications of the case. Isn’t that a surprise?
I still think, as I said at the meeting, that never has the Supreme Court done so much by doing so little. With respect to the divisibility issue, which is of the greatest long-run significance, the Court explicitly did not change the law at all. And yet …. We all know that they did. Now, instead of divisibility being an insuperable hurdle, it should become something like routine.
Or so I hope.