Case Study: Montana NRD and Remediation

Our lawyers have worked on all phases of Atlantic Richfield Company’s CERCLA remediation and natural resource damages work in Montana, Colorado and  other western states.  In Montana, our lawyers have represented Atlantic Richfield’s interests for four National Priorities List sites from the initial investigatory phases through remedy selection and initial implementation.   DGS lawyers have provided advice throughout the RI/FS process, in support of interim removal actions, ARARs identification and selection, ecological and human health risk assessment processes, remedy evaluation and selection, coordination with EPA’s National Remedy Review Board, reviewing and commenting on EPA’s Proposed Plan, negotiating Administrative Orders on Consent and Consent Decrees, reviewing and commenting on Unilateral Orders and developing approaches for responding to Unilateral Orders, and challenging a Unilateral Order. 

DGS lawyers have represented Atlantic Richfield on NRD claims in Montana for over 17 years, on issues such as:  natural resource injury determination; injury quantification; determination of baseline; scope of trusteeship; resource assessment plans; restoration plans; remediation vs. NRD restoration; restoration damages and compensable value damages.   DGS lawyers prepared comments on the Department of the Interior’s proposed natural resource damage assessment regulations.  DGS lawyers worked for much of the time as a team with other lawyers retained by Atlantic Richfield to prepare the Montana NRD case.  After many months of trial in the late 1990s, the case still is not resolved, though a significant portion of the case has been settled.