What Every Municipal Lawyer Should Know About Recovering Damages for Legacy Environmental Contamination of Municipal Resources

Municipalities have long shouldered the burden of managing PCBs, PFAS, MBTE, TCP, Chromium and other contaminants in their drinking water, wastewater and stormwater systems, often spending millions of dollars per year.  This webinar provides an affirmative litigation  framework for local governments to recover damages from the manufacturers, distributors and dischargers of the contaminants, shifting the financial burden away from taxpayers and ratepayers and onto the companies that profited from the sale and uncontrolled use of hazardous chemical products.  The webinar will provide a brief historical overview of the development of the law of environmental recoveries: CERCLA, the Clean Water Act (and state equivalents), as well as state law claims under products liability, consumer protection, public nuisance, and trespass. It will provide an update on the proposed $550 million national class PCB settlement with Monsanto, and an overview of municipalities’ additional options to recover from dischargers the costs of PCB management, reduction, and remediation.   The webinar will give an overview of the tightening regulations for PFAS in municipal water systems, and litigation options for shifting the future huge costs of PFAS remediation.  Municipal law departments can bring in significant revenues through affirmative environmental litigation.

Speaker: Kyle McGee, Suzanne Sangree, Viola Vetter, & Jason Wilson