FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE ENR THURSDAY, DECEMBER 21, 1995 (202) 616-2771 TDD (202) 514-1888 OCCIDENTAL TO PAY $129 MILLION IN LOVE CANAL SETTLEMENT WASHINGTON, D.C. -- In a successful end to a toxic dump disaster that became synonymous with the hazards of environmental pollution, and that gave birth to the nation's Superfund program to clean up the most hazardous toxic waste sites, the Justice Department and the Environmental Protection Agency announced today that the Occidental Chemical Corporation will pay the government $129 million to cover the costs of the Love Canal incident that began in the late 1970's. The agreement results from a Justice Department lawsuit filed 16 years ago after a toxic waste nightmare forced the evacuation of more than one thousand homes, an elementary school and an entire neighborhood in Niagara Falls, New York. Attorney General Janet Reno said the settlement "should send a message of federal persistence and tenacity." "If Congress will give us the resources, we will work to get polluters to pay their share," said Reno. She noted that Congress is currently attempting to cut environmental enforcement. EPA Administrator Carol M. Browner said "the Love Canal settlement underscores this Administration's firm commitment to ensuring that polluters -- not the American people -- pick up the tab for cleaning up toxic waste dumps. Strong enforcement of our nation's environmental laws is vital to protecting the health of the one in four Americans who still lives near toxic waste dumps. Under the terms of today's settlement, the federal government would get back all of the $101 million it spent on cleanup and $28 million in interest. Occidental will pay $102 million to the EPA Superfund and $27 million to the United States on behalf of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. FEMA funded early cleanup and relocation activities, prior to the enactment of the Superfund law in December 1980. The Love Canal saga dates back to 1942 when the Hooker Chemical Corporation, Occidental's corporate predecessor, began dumping toxic chemicals into an abandoned canal in the city of Niagara Falls in western New York. Over the next eleven years, Hooker dumped 20,000 tons of chemicals into Love Canal. Thereafter, it sold the property to the Niagara Falls School Board. Homes and a school were built adjacent to the canal. In 1977, Love Canal area residents began complaining about the strange substances oozing into their basements. Between 1978 and 1980, President Jimmy Carter used disaster relief authority to declare two Federal emergencies in the area. The government funded the initial cleanup efforts and relocated hundreds of area residents. The disaster led Congress, in 1980, to enact the Superfund law, which established a cleanup program for toxic waste sites around the nation and required waste dumpers to pay cleanup costs. After the passage of the Superfund law, the federal government, working in tandem with the State of New York, cleaned up the Love Canal site. Dioxin was removed from creeks and sewers adjacent to the Love Canal to ensure safety of children who played in the creeks and residents who might eat contaminated fish. Federal and state agencies also improved and continued to operate a leachate collection system, first built in 1978-79, to prevent contaminated groundwater from spreading outward from the Canal. Groundwater around the Canal was monitored to make sure the collection system was working. Extensive additional studies of the area were done. In 1988, the state and federal government declared that most of the area was again suitable for residential use, and the Love Canal Area Revitalization Authority began selling the abandoned homes to private citizens. Virtually all remedial activities at the site, other than the continuing operation of the leachate collection system, were completed by 1989. The Federal District Court in Buffalo had already ruled that Occidental was a "responsible party" under the Superfund law (a separate question from determining the amount of liability). In the lawsuit, Occidental had charged that the United States was also a responsible party and should contribute toward the cleanup costs based on regulatory actions or alleged dumping by several federal agencies. The United States denied Occidental's charges and the issue went to trial, but the court has not yet ruled on the claims. In today's settlement, the government agreed to pay an additional $8 million of the total cleanup costs to resolve these claims. Assistant Attorney General Lois J. Schiffer, in charge of the Justice Department's Environment and Natural Resources Division, criticized current Superfund proposals which might give Occidental a $64.5 million tax credit for its Love Canal payment. Schiffer said, "This would destroy the fundamental principle that a polluter should pay to clean up its own mess." Schiffer noted that one of the reasons the case was not settled earlier was that Occidental pursued extensive litigation to test the limits of the Superfund law. Administrator Browner added, "elimination of the 'retroactive liability' provisions in the Superfund law -- as some in Congress have proposed -- would have let this polluter off the hook, because Hooker dumped the toxic waste that polluted Love Canal in the 1940's and 1950's." The Federal Emergency Management Agency also expressed satisfaction with the settlement. "We are pleased that the Superfund law has enabled us to recover our money," said William Tidball, Associate Director of FEMA's Response and Recovery Directorate. "We are also pleased that Superfund exists so that we no longer have to rely on disaster authorities to address these kinds of problems, as we did at the beginning of the Love Canal case." The consent decree will be lodged today in Buffalo before U.S. District Judge John T. Curtin who has presided over the case since its inception. The settlement will undergo a 30-day notice and comment period prior to entry by the Court. ### 95-638