ELR Citation: ELR 20097
No(s). 02-853-CV-W-NKL (W.D. Mo. Jan 7, 2005)

A district court, in a dispute concerning who should pay to clean up contamination at the Armour Road Superfund site in Missouri, allocated 90% of a potentially responsible party's (PRP's) past response costs under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA), future CERCLA response costs, and prejudgment interest to be paid by other contributing parties. In reaching its allocation determination, the court looked at how much arsenic was imported to the site, who was responsible for the handling of the arsenic once it was at the site, the length of time each party was at the site, who was in the best position to prevent and clean up arsenic contamination once it was understood that the herbicide operations on the site carried a substantial risk of arsenic contamination, and how did the parties cooperate with governmental officials. And to reflect two parties' extraordinary refusal to cooperate with environmental authorities, as well as the PRP's extraordinary cooperation, the court required those two parties to collectively bear 25% of the PRP's responsibility for past and future response costs.