Law Commons^™

Oil And Gas Issues Involved In Cercla Reauthorization., Joseph R. Dancy, Victoria A. Dancy

St. Mary's Law Journal

After several decades of environmental legislation, the regulated community faces an extremely complex and costly matrix of obligations and responsibilities. For industry in general, the most expensive environmental statute enacted has been the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act of 1980 (CERCLA). CERCLA created the Hazardous Substances Superfund (Superfund) and established retroactive liability for remediation of hazardous substance contamination. President Clinton admitted CERCLA does not work and even labelled the Superfund a “disaster.” Even though public and private entities have already spent twenty billion dollars on the CERCLA program since its inception, only around ten or twenty percent of …