Foo - I Hate CERCLA and RCRA

They make me wish I was a bike mechanic instead of a lawyer. . .

that is all.

ps. if you know what these are you know what I mean--if not then
be glad.

Super fund? I'm sorry.
Sunshine Bicycles in Athens, GA has a help wanted sign in the window.

I thought those were a boon to lawyers.

^ they are a boon to lawyers in that they make a lot of work--
I'm dealing with a general "hey, how do these laws work and how
do they apply to our project" type question. . .and to the uninitiated
the laws are a bit tough to assimilate.

I thought those were a boon to lawyers.

Well, they certainly are a full employment guarantee for lawyers. So is asbestos. So is the ever-mutating misama that is the Internal Revenue Code. Doesn't mean the work is the least bit enjoyable. You have to have a pretty special brain to be able to do any of these for any length of time without going postal, losing your soul, or both. There's nothing quite like sending out 543 specially prepared interrogatories, all requiring answers in writing and sworn to under penalty of perjury, to some poor schlub who is dying of mesothelioma to make you feel good about yourself and your profession . . . . which is why I won't go near that stuff with a ten foot pole.

The real problem with CERCLA and the like is that so much of the game ends up being about finger-pointing instead of actually getting sites cleaned up. That doesn't mean that sites don't get cleaned up - sometimes, they do, eventually - it's just that the law as devised is at least as much about apperances and "fixing blame" rather than actually accomplishing the supposed goal. The amount of resources that are wasted on fighting over which parties are responsible for a clean-up, and then fighting over which insurer is on the hook for the bill, beggars the imagination.

In about the only thing I have ever heard the insurance industry advocate that I agree with, the major insurers wanted to simply surcharge all existing actors and insurers in the industries that caused the Stringfellows and the Love Canals and the Iron Mountains across the board to fix the problems, rather than trying to figure out who over the past 50 or 75 years ran the places or dumped stuff at the places and pin it on them (or their insurere) to pay. (An especially stupid process, that many of the operators and dumpers no longer exist or were merged into something else 17 times in the meantime.) A hell of a lot less money would be spent, each entity's costs would be a hell of a lot more predictable, and hell of a lot more remediation would actually get done. Of course, nobody in Congress could stand and pontificate about having cracked down on polluters, so that kind of common sense never stood a chance. :mad::(

I'm not a lawyer, I'm a hydrogeologist who specializes in subsurface site characterization, monitoring, permitting and clean up issues at a variety of RCRA subtitle C and D sites, and state and federal CERCLA sites.

RCRA is a special interest boondoggle for the most part, the biggest hazardous waste generators in the country, the mining and oil and gas industries, are largely exempt and have been for years; and the Subtitle D regs were manipulated by the biggest waste disposal companies (Waste Management and BFI) back in the Reagan/Bush Sr. years.

Don't get me started on CERCLA, it was supposed to provide money to clean up all the Love Canals, with wrangling over who is liable left for later. But it's never been properly funded and way more money gets spent on lawyers and litigation than ever gets spent on actually characterizing and cleaning up the polluted sites. That said, there have been some success stories over the years.

I took one class about CERCLA in law school and right then swore "never again." Wading through that crap is some of the most mind-numbing stuff I've ever encountered in the practice. It was the acronyms that really drove me crazy. There's an acronym for everything. The day I found myself writing "The EPA uses RCRA and CERCLA to force the PRPs to clean up the PCBs," I decided I was done with environmental law.

I took one class about CERCLA in law school and right then swore "never again." Wading through that crap is some of the most mind-numbing stuff I've ever encountered in the practice. It was the acronyms that really drove me crazy. There's an acronym for everything. The day I found myself writing "The EPA uses RCRA and CERCLA to force the PRPs to clean up the PCBs," I decided I was done with environmental law.

"After this mind-numbing journey through RCRA, we return to the provision that is, after all, the one before us for examination." American Mining Congress v. EPA 824 F2d 1177, 1189 (DC Cir. 1987)

By the look of that, is it safe to assume that it may take the rest of time for the room full of a hundred monkeys, chained to typewriters, to slap out MacBeth, but only about a week and a half to start churning out environmental law code?

to be, or not to be...
that is the gzorninplat....


an old Bob Newhart joke:)

They make me wish I was a bike mechanic instead of a lawyer. . .

that is all.

ps. if you know what these are you know what I mean--if not then
be glad.

Remind me why I'm in law school again. ;P

By the look of that, is it safe to assume that it may take the rest of time for the room full of a hundred monkeys, chained to typewriters, to slap out MacBeth, but only about a week and a half to start churning out environmental law code?

the individual code sections aren't that hard to read or poorly written, in general--
it is the web of federal statutes, federal regulations, delegated authority to states,
state statutes, and state regulations that is maddening. I hate these general
"how does this work" questions. . .it is much easier to answer something like
"is hexavalent chromium hazardous waste subject to RCRA" than to answer--
"how can we perform state environmental review consistent with federal law which
trumps state law, even though the fed law is delegated to state authority"

Remind me why I'm in law school again. ;P

cause once you get those paychecks you can get the sweetest bike you
don't have enough time to ride

Remind me why I'm in law school again. ;P

If you don't know, then I suggest you run, not walk, to the nearest exit and keep going. Law can be a very rewarding career, but not for those who (like me) just kind of stumble into it.

By the look of that, is it safe to assume that it may take the rest of time for the room full of a hundred monkeys, chained to typewriters, to slap out MacBeth, but only about a week and a half to start churning out environmental law code?

Nah, the monkeys would take at least a year or two to crank out an entire environmental legislative scheme - even monkeys can only pound a keyboard so fast. A week and a half is what it would take the simian-encrusted room to produce this year's amendments to the federal peach pit regulations. And believe it or not, there is a good chance that somewhere in D.C., there is one or more government lawyers being paid with our tax dollars to do exactly that - well, this may be apricot pit regulation update year instead of peach pit regualtion update year, but you get the idea.

Moral of the story: Not every law school grad gets to be Atticus Finch. In fact, damn few of them do.

If you don't know, then I suggest you run, not walk, to the nearest exit and keep going. Law can be a very rewarding career, but not for those who (like me) just kind of stumble into it.

No, I know why I'm here and I won't be getting one of those big paychecks kaiju-velo is talking about.

Moral of the story: Not every law school grad gets to be Atticus Finch. In fact, damn few of them do.

So that's what my boy has been up to. I've been wondering why he drove a nicer car than mine. And his collection of Andrew Wyeth originals really is amazing.

http://homepage.mac.com/awcg/.Pictures/Bike/Mirth/Atticus.jpg
Atticus Finch

No, I know why I'm here and I won't be getting one of those big paychecks kaiju-velo is talking about.

just for the record I don't work for a giant firm making a huge salary--but I did blow some of my relatively modest first paychecks on a new bike. . .

So I found the section of the California Code of Regs that implements the California equivalent of RCRA--they were repealed by operation of law because DTSC failed to satisfy the rulemaking process. . .

poor bastages, I feel your pain, I have done some CERCLA work