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Asarco Llc V. Atlantic Richfield Company, Ryan L. Hickey

Public Land & Resources Law Review

The Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liabiltiy Act, commonly known as CERCLA, facilitates cleanup of hazardous waste sites and those contaminated by other harmful substances by empowering the Environmental Protection Agency to identify responsible parties and require them to undertake or fund remediation. Because pollution sometimes occurrs over long periods of time by multiple parties, CERCLA also enables polluters to seek financial contribution from other contaminators of a particular site. The Ninth Circuit clarified the particuar circumstances under which contribution actions may arise in Asarco LLC v. Atlantic Richfield Co., holding non-CERCLA settlements may give rise to CERCLA contribution …

Koontz V. St. Johns River Water Management District, Ross Keogh

Public Land & Resources Law Review

Koontz extends the application of Nollan and Dolan, which require exactions of real property for land-use permits to share a “nexus” and be “roughly proportional” to the regulation to be constitutional. A divided United States Supreme Court held that “monetary exactions,” potentially including building permit fees or impact fees, must satisfy the Nollan and Dolan requirements even if the government denies the permit.[1] The Court did not reach the merits of the petitioner’s appeal.

[1](Kagan, Ginsburg, Breyer, and Sotomayor, JJ., dissenting).