Initiatives

With CERCLA enacted nearly 40 years ago, many sites have been investigated and cleaned up and have now been under decades of OM&M. With the many consent decrees (CDs) and unilateral orders (UAOs) for response actions possessing a somewhat arbitrary O&M timeframe of “30 years”, the question of “what happens after 30 years?” is being evermore posed by major PRPs. What is and how can we reach an “end or exit or reset” from the clutches of the Superfund program?

With today’s U.S. EPA evaluating CERCLA program changes through the Superfund Task Force, now is an ideal time to evaluate alternative methods to more cost-effectively manage mature Superfund sites (even by possibly having them exit the original program?).

Our sister company Project Navigator, Ltd. (PNL) (www.ProjectNavigator.com) has been interacting with clients and U.S. EPA on how appropriately selected, mature, stable, low risk sites could be more cost-effectively stewarded if they were “legally transferred” into a “boneyard, site-holding” entity…such as Land Navigator, LLC.

The proposed Boneyard entity would be responsible for OM&M (and further aggressively right-sizing such activities), and assuming title, where applicable. The Boneyard entity would also seek site reuse options, an approach which is very much in accord with the recommendations described in 2017’s U.S. EPA Superfund Task Force, 90 Day Review Report. Internally, companies will no longer need to track and provide administrative oversight, further reducing any individual PRPs’ spend.

Sites transferred into the Boneyard will have completed all site compliance remedial activities, except for the tail of routine, repetitive, OM&M activities. Such conditions may allow the original CD/UAO to be terminated, allowing future site (think “just land”) stewarding to occur far more simply outside the formalities of historical CERCLA.