Is It Time to Boycott GE?

[Guest guest]

GE Wants Superfund Declared Wrong

By H. JOSEF HEBERT

Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP)--The General Electric Co., confronting hundreds of millions

of dollars in cleanup costs for hazardous chemical spills, asked a federal

court Tuesday to declare the Superfund toxic waste cleanup law

unconstitutional.

In a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court, the company argued that the law

gives federal regulators ``uncontrolled authority'' to order ``intrusive''

cleanup remedies ``of unlimited scope.''

This, along with a failure to provide timely judicial review, amounts to an

unconstitutional violation of due process, the lawsuit contends.

The law is ``flatly unconstitutional on its face,'' said ce Tribe, the

Harvard University constitutional law expert, who is among the lawyers

representing General Electric in the suit filed against the Environmental

Protection Agency.

While the suit does not seek redress on specific Superfund claims, it comes

only weeks before the EPA is expected to announce a preliminary proposal to

clean up PCB-laced sediment in the Hudson River.

The PCBs, or polychlorinated biphenyls, were released into the river between

1946 and 1977 by two General Electric plants on the upper Hudson River and

now are buried in sediment. As a result, a 197-mile section of the river has

been officially declared a Superfund site because of the contamination.

The EPA is widely expected to order General Electric to dredge about 35

miles of the river just north of Albany, N.Y., where most of the PCBs have

settled.

General Electric, which already has spent $160 million on studies and shore

cleanup, has argued for years that the sediment poses no health threat

because the PCBs are buried. But environmentalists contend the PCBs

contaminate fish and pose a health threat to those who eat fish caught in

the waters.

A large-scale dredging project could cost as much as $1 billion, according

to some estimates.

Noting the pending action on the Hudson River case, EPA spokesman

Cohen called the timing of the lawsuit ``exceedingly curious.''

``They're questioning a law that has been used for over numerous years in

countless cases successfully to remove toxic wastes and threats to the

health of the American people. It has never once been challenged on

constitutional grounds,'' said Cohen.

Mark Behan, a spokesman for General Electric, said the suit ``is not about

any individual matter'' but acknowledged--as does the legal brief filed by

the company--that General Electric is involved in a number of potentially

expensive Superfund cases.

In addition to the Hudson River cleanup, General Electric also is involved

in Superfund projects at a former factories in Hoboken, N.J. and Milford,

N.H. All three sites are cited in the lawsuit.

The 1980 Superfund law has come under broad attack over the years as critics

charge that its provisions have spawned more litigation than cleanup.

Enacted by Congress after the Love Canal toxic waste scandal in the 1970s,

the law requires anyone responsible for past toxic waste contamination to

clean up the contamination, even if the polluter no longer operates or owns

the site.

Tribe, the attorney for GE, said the Superfund law has ``an

Alice-in-Wonderland regime of punishment'' that, even in non-emergency

cases, ``gives the EPA the power to skew the evidence, ignore other points

of view and order action without any independent review.''