Relates to responsible parties for petroleum contaminated sites and incentives to parties who are willing to remediate such sites

Section 2 of this bill would amend Navigation Law § 180 subdivision (a) of subparagraphs 1 and 2, to allow for the state comptroller's administrator of the spill fund to represent the state at meetings with more than one discharger, and to apportion liability among the dischargers at a meeting or hearing.

Section 3 of this bill would amend Navigation Law § 181 subparagraph 1 to include a liability limitation incentive to parties who agree to perform a spill cleanup identical to parties in the brownfield cleanup program.

Section 4 of this bill would amend Navigation Law § 183, to allow the administrator to promote and arrange a settlement between the claimant and not only one discharger but multiple dischargers who may be responsible for the discharge and to present evidence to the administrator that other party may be wholly or partially responsible for the claim.

Justification

The navigation law provisions related to the remediation of petroleum contaminated sites has not been amended for 19 years since 1992 and has been subject to years of litigation since the current liability scheme encourages the Department to only seek cleanup response costs from a single discharger. This legislation would improve the brownfield cleanup program by making the program permanent; narrowing eligibility to contaminated sites that are abandoned, vacant, underutilized, functionally obsolete, or in real estate markets that cannot absorb the required cleanup costs; reinstate eligibility for the state's most contaminated enforcement sites if a volunteer is willing to take over the remaining cleanup responsibilities but also has a redevelopment project for the site; provide an alternative expedited remediation program for minimally contaminated sites; promote a new allocation scheme under the navigation law to encourage multiple discharger to remediate petroleum contaminated sites, which represent the largest category of contaminated sites; eliminate the real property tax credit which will save the state revenue, and streamlining the legal process. These changes would promote predictability for program applicants

and would further advance the program's environmental cleanup and urban revitalization goals by incentivizing the remediation, strategic reuse and redevelopment of contaminated land throughout the State.

Existing law

The current provisions of the Navigation Law, which have been amended, do not allow for the department or the comptrollers' administrator of the spill fund to name more than one discharger as the responsible party at a site. This does not reflect the reality that typically more than one party should be named by the department and present at meetings or hearings with the comptroller's office for purposes of reached a fair settlement on allocation of liability between the parties.

Prior legislative history

This is a new bill.

Statement in support

These amendments are critical, particularly to the petroleum industry, because frequently the wrong petroleum site owner is named as the discharger, and their only recourse is litigation against other dischargers. Non-petroleum company site owners do not have resources to commence litigation and sites become abandoned. Third party litigation is costly and time consuming, and abandonment is far to frequent on the average petroleum corner lot. Meanwhile these sites, which are well located, are not remediated and become eyesores in every community throughout the state. The Navigation Law has not been amended in many years. These provisions do not change the stringent liability scheme, but will enable agencies involved to allow parties to present evidence that other dischargers should either be named as the discharger or joined into the settlement proceeding to reach a fair allocation between the parties.

Budget implications

These changes will result in more expeditious cleanups of petroleum contaminated sites throughout the state with increases tax revenue from remediated sites. There should be little to no cost to the agencies since significance expenses are now incurred by these agencies through enforcement efforts to secure cleanup cost recovery from the incorrect parties and because tax revenue from the redevelopment of these sites should offset any need for additional staff if required.

Effective date

Immediately.