[CPEO-BIF] Federal appeals court allows CTS Asheville (NC) suit to move forward

[Lenny Siegel <lsiegel@cpeo.org>]

Federal appeals court overturns CTS decision; case could go to trial


By Margaret Williams
Mountain XPress (NC)
July 10, 2013

The U.S. Fourth Circuit of Appeals has ruled in favor of 23 local  
citizens pressing to get CTS Corp. to clean up the contaminated site  
on Mills Gap Road in south Asheville and compensate affected  
homeowners. Their case could now go to trial or move up to the U.S.  
Supreme Court, says Tate MacQueen, a Buncombe resident who helped get  
the property declared a federal Superfund site.

About three years ago, the residents filed a complaint against CTS,  
which operated an electroplating plant on the site for several  
decades and is blamed for contaminating soil, ground-water supplies  
and streams with such known carcinogens as trichloroethylene (the  
same chemical involved at Marine base Camp LeJeune). Based on a state  
rule, a lower court ruled against the residents, saying it had been  
more than 10 years since the contamination occurred and was  
discovered, MacQueen explains.

CTS closed the plant in 1985; contamination was documented by 1990;  
but it wasn’t until 2009 that two of the property owners in the suit  
- David Bradley and Renee Richardson - learned that their well water  
also showed unsafe levels of TCE and other toxins linked to company  
disposal practices at the facility (see "Off Target," July 13, 2010,  
Xpress). Twenty-one of their neighbors joined in the suit, which  
failed at the district level.

...

For the entire article, see
http://www.mountainx.com/article/51211/Federal-appeals-court- 
overturns-CTS-decision-case-could-go-to-trial

--

Lenny Siegel
Executive Director, Center for Public Environmental Oversight
a project of the Pacific Studies Center
278-A Hope St., Mountain View, CA 94041
Voice: 650/961-8918 or 650/969-1545
Fax: 650/961-8918
<lsiegel@cpeo.org>
http://www.cpeo.org

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