[CPEO-MEF] VOCs, LITIGATION: "The law requires no such miraculous foresight,” says U.S. attorney at Ft. Detrick (MD)

[Lenny Siegel <lsiegel@cpeo.org>]

U.S. attorney requests dismissal of developer's case against Fort  
Detrick

By Sylvia Carignan
Frederick News-Post (MD)
August 1, 2014

A U.S. attorney asked a judge Thursday to dismiss developer Waverley  
View's lawsuit against Fort Detrick.

The U.S. attorney representing Fort Detrick argued that an exception  
to the Federal Tort Claims Act protects the Army's waste disposal  
practices in the base's Area B. Waverley View sued the Army in May  
for neglecting to clean up chemical, radiological and biological  
contamination left over from Fort Detrick's decades of research.

The exception "protects decisions to bury chemical waste in unlined  
pits because there were no applicable mandatory and specific  
directives at the time of disposal," the U.S. attorney said in court  
documents.

Though Waverley argued it was the Army's duty to clean up the  
contamination, the U.S. attorney said that the Environmental  
Protection Agency had not yet regulated certain contaminants when  
Fort Detrick first started disposing of waste at Area B, and  
therefore, could not have known that they were dangerous.
"The law requires no such miraculous foresight," the U.S. attorney said.

...

For the entire article, see
http://www.fredericknewspost.com/news/crime_and_justice/courts/u-s- 
attorney-requests-dismissal-of-developer-s-case-against/ 
article_e08b3812-a5a8-5615-b4e3-c50ff5210d9b.html

You may need to copy and paste the link.

--

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

_______________________________________________
Military mailing list
Military@lists.cpeo.org
http://lists.cpeo.org/listinfo.cgi/military-cpeo.org