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How the Barton bill protects cleaners from excessive clean-up costs
The following information explaining how the Barton Bill works was comes from the Baise & Miller firm. Baise & Miller can be reached by telephone at (202) 331-9100, fax at (202) 331-9060, or e-mail at baisemill@aol.com.
- Most environmental problems faced by drycleaners today seem to be caused by landlords refusing to renew leases to drycleaners or by difficulty in borrowing money or selling drycleaning property. In addition, experts anticipate a growing number of private lawsuits seeking compensation or cleanup.
- Landlords and bankers sue drycleaners because they do not want to be stuck with all of the costs of cleanup, which could happen under various federal state and local environmental laws. Thus it is usually the future threat of vast environmental liability that drives landlords and others to sue drycleaners to undertake expensive cleanups.
- Under current environmental laws, one person could be held responsible of the entire cost of a cleanup, even if that party's share of the contamination is very small.
- Because EPA has not set a clean-up standard for soil and groundwater contamination, the Safe Drinking Water Act standard of 5 parts per billion (ppb) is often applied to cleanups, even through this is arbitrary and unscientific.
- Cleanup to 5 ppb is almost impossible to attain with present technology and would in most circumstances be prohibitively expensive.
- The Barton Bill would tie the clean-up standard for perchloroethylene (perc) to OSHA's Permissible Exposure Level (PEL), which is currently 100 part per million (ppm).
- The Barton Bill clean-up level would be set 10 times lower than OSHA's PEL, or 10 ppm under the current PEL. This takes into account a margin of safety to protect sensitive populations, such as children and the elderly.
- Practically all exposure (over 99 percent) to perc occurs in the workplace. Thus OSHA's PEL covers most actual exposure to perc. A tiny fraction of any exposure to perc is from soil or groundwater.
- Sites with perc exceeding the Barton Bill level would have to be cleaned up to the Barton Bill level.
- Under the Barton Bill, states or municipalities could choose to clean up to a stricter level than that specified in the Bill, but they could not require drycleaners to pay for it.
- Property owners who rent to drycleaners and banks who lend to them are also intended to be relieved of most liability under the Barton Bill.
For further information: Marshall Lee Miller or Charlotte E. Giddings at Baise & Miller, P.C. (202) 331-9100
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