Vol. 9, No. 3, Pg. 40. Puffing Properly Back fo Work Through the South Carolina Voluntary Cleanup Program.

• Author: By H. Bowen Woodruff

South Carolina Lawyer

1997.

Vol. 9, No. 3, Pg. 40.

Puffing Properly Back fo Work Through the South Carolina Voluntary Cleanup Program

40Puffing Properly Back fo Work Through the South Carolina Voluntary Cleanup ProgramBy H. Bowen WoodruffSoon states were starting their own Brownfields programs, and Jeter and Lindler saw the IMP proposal as a good test case for the South Carolina Voluntary Cleanup Program (VCP).

Ted Davis would not have touched the Batchelder-Blasius site in Spartanburg County were it not for the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control (DHEC). An abandoned, contaminated aluminum smelter, the site presented a challenge with its mounds of slag and ash, barrels of waste oil, bladder pond thick with waste oil, abandoned smelters and piles of discarded tires and rusted equipment.

Batchelder-Blasius was bankrupt and could contribute nothing to the cleanup. But Davis, chief operating officer and environmental manager for Industrial Metal Processing, Inc. (IMP), wanted the site for the company's latest scrap metal processing plant. He offered DHEC the following proposal: IMP would pay to clean up the site if DHEC agreed not to hold IMP liable for the existing condition.

It was one of those rare instances where private enterprise meets governmental initiative. Gail Rawls Jeter, Brownfields coordinator for the Bureau of Land and Waste Management's Division of Site Assessment and Remediation, and Keith Lindler, division director, were in the process of introducing EPA's Brownfields initiative to the department.

Started as a pilot program in 1995, the initiative offered an incentive for the redevelopment of contaminated property by releasing nonresponsible parties - parties who did not cause or contribute to a release of hazardous substances on the site - from liability under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act (CERCLA), 42 U.S.C. 9601 et seq., and shifting authority and control from EPA to local communities.

Soon states were starting their own Brownfields programs, and Jeter and Lindler saw the IMP proposal as a good test case for the South Carolina Voluntary Cleanup Program (VCP).

DHEC had been entering into consent orders with responsible parties as early as 1988. These orders gave the responsible party the department's covenant not to sue for remedial work...