Source: http://www.nj.com, March 27, 2017
By: Spencer Kent
New Jersey is off the hook from having to pay part of a nearly $80 million cleanup of the Raritan Bay Slag Superfund Site, the state Supreme Court ruled Monday.
The cleanup will cover the Laurence Harbor seawall, which, during its construction in the 1970s, caused lead slag to be dumped in the Raritan Bay.
In 2014, the Environmental Protection Agency ordered NL Industries, which had operated a plant in Perth AmboY, to clean up the site or face hundreds of millions of dollars in fines.
Officials had alleged that lead slag, an industrial byproduct, had been brought from the company’s plant and dumped on property owned by a trucking company between 1960 to 1980, according to court documents.
The company maintained, however, that it shouldn’t be held responsible for the cleanup because it only supplied the material and never dumped it at the site.
The company also said that the state, county and township were primarily responsible for approving the use of lead slag along the Laurence Harbor seawall at the time.
Jeff Tittel, director of the Sierra Club New Jersey chapter, said in a statement on Monday, that he agreed with the ruling and that he hoped “to see more cases where the polluting companies are forced to clean-up their messes rather than the taxpayers of New Jersey doing it.”
A trial court and a state appeals court rejected New Jersey’s motion to dismiss the suit. Monday’s Supreme Court ruling reversed those decisions.