Superfund Scam

[JBMcB]

This paywalled headline piqued my curiosity in the Detroit News:
"Michigan businesses cry foul over requests to fund waste site cleanup"

So I started doing some digging.

This involves a chemical company named Detrex, that owned a site on 12886 Eaton Street in Detroit. It was involved with contract hazardous chemical disposal. So, if you are a factory or a car repair shop, and regularly have barrels of hazardous waste like motor oil or used solvents, you contract out to Detrex and they will dispose of it according to EPA guidelines.

Turns out they weren't running their facility according to EPA guidelines and, in what appears to be some sort of agreement with the EPA, they shifted title these facilities to another entity that is ostensibly responsible to clean them up.

The name of this new entity is Trex Properties LLC, that doesn't appear to exist anywhere except legal filings and property records.

What Trex Properties LLC does is send legal notices to companies that previously contracted with Detrex, saying if they don't pay some amount they have come up with, usually between several thousand to tens of thousand of dollars, they would be subject to a federal lawsuit and would have to pay much more later. Possibly in the millions of dollars.

These notices say that Trex is owed these monies as laid out in the superfund act [[CERCLA) However, if you call the EPA and ask about it, they say, as a contractee operating under good faith, you owe nothing to some sub-entity that is tasked with cleaning up your contractor's mess.

Here's an article about a similar scam Trex was attempting with a Detrex site in North Carolina:
https://www.repairerdrivennews.com/2...sue-for-shops/

If you poke around on the web, you'll find various legal filings by Trex against these contractees, usually ending up with Trex withdrawing the lawsuit after a motion for dismissal by the defendant. In one motion to dismiss the judge noted that the cleanup estimate that Trex submitted to the EPA was wildly out of line with how much money they were seeking from the defendants, by several millions of dollars. Trex subsequently asked for the case to be dismissed.

[Richard]

Relevant even more so in Detroit with its large amount of potentially contaminated sites.

But the state of Michigan EPA has surveyed every property in the city and you can reference it before buying the property to see if there is any contamination issues.

I am not sure if the EPA can take the stance of holding cradle to grave responsibility after contracting disposal out because almost every country in the world contracts hazardous waste disposal out to where it is dumped in other countries.

By that reasoning those countries could sue the U.S. for billions in clean up costs.

There was another case where a small city paid a contractor for decades to spray used motor oil on its dirt streets to keep the dust down,which was a common practice back then,now the EPA is suing him for clean up costs,he retired like 20 years ago and is now in his 90s.

This is the same EPA that says if you have a vintage house that has lead paint on the exterior and sand one siding board you are liable for lead contamination in a 6 block radius.

But a corporation is an entity,bankrupt the corporation,who are they going to go after ?

If you are using a EPA certified company to dispose of the waste,then it would or should be on the EPA to hold that company responsible,because in good faith you disposed of the waste according to EPA rules.

On a side note,every citizen in the United States is guilty of illegally disposing of toxic waste under EPA guidelines,ever thrown an empty aerosol spray paint can in the trash?

Same with taggers,they can be charged with illegally distributing toxins in the air under EPA guidelines. Because they are using spray paint to tag while not in a control atmosphere.

[DavidGeorge]

...
But a corporation is an entity,bankrupt the corporation,who are they going to go after ?
...

Bankrupting Trex Properties LLC doesn't remove liability for Detrex. Case in point, the recent 3M earplug lawsuit for hearing loss and tinnitus caused by defective earplugs. Aearo Technologies that manufactured the defective earplugs was a subsidiary corporation of 3M. After Aearo started losing lawsuits, Aearo filed for bankruptcy. Lawyers then filed a class action lawsuit against 3M and the judge ruled that 3M was liable and being a separate corporate entity doesn't protect 3M from liability. 3M recently settled the lawsuit by agreeing to pay $5.5 Billion.

The bottom line is that Trek Properties LLC should be going after Detrex, not scamming small businesses. The Michigan EPA should be going after both of these corporate scammers--Detrex and Trex.I don't know why small businesses would be liable under the Superfund Act, but it's a good thing JBM is exposing these scammers because what's happening behind the scenes with the Superfund Act is never going to get fixed unless enough voters are made aware of it.

[JBMcB]

The bottom line is that Trek Properties LLC should be going after Detrex, not scamming small businesses.

What I think happened is that, via a deal with the EPA, Detrex spun off Trex as a separate entity to manage these superfund sites, with a chunk of money seeded by Detrex to handle the cleanup. Trex isn't going to go after Detrex because, in some ephemeral way, they *are* Detrex. So what happens when your initial estimate of the cleanup is off? This is why the judge in the case I mention brought up the initial estimate being way off of what they are seeking from their old clients in the lawsuits. Detrex put the absolute bare minimum amount of money into Trex for cleanup. Once overages start happening, Trex isn't going to go back to Detrex for more cash, they are going to find that money somewhere else.

[Richard]

The crux of it is holding the person liable cradle to grave.

The part about the pick up company not properly disposing after collecting to do so is fraud,been happening a long time.

The Super Fund is a scam also.

It was created and funded by lawsuits against petroleum companies that used a rubber 90 degree connector that went from the buried tanks at service stations,they only lasted 10 years before breaking down and leaking fuel.

The lawsuit was because the petroleum companies had internal notes where they knew that but failed to disclose it to the service station owners.

So the EPA took the funds from the lawsuit and put it into an account,the thought was to keep the principal in the account and use the interest in order to pay out.

That was the Super Fund

What happened during the years was states and cities saw that pile of money and slowly started using it for things it was not originally designed for,all of the sudden everything was a target to be paid for by the superfund.

When it was established you could apply to have your old service station tanks pulled and the contamination mediated in a process that took a few months.

It was critical because a good 60% of service stations shut down and abandoned the properties in the gas crises of the 70s ,that left millions of underground tanks leaking raw fuel into the ground water now for decades.

That process back then from the time you applied,to the time the tanks got pulled was 6 months,now it can be over 10 years.

Also when it was established the EPA grossly underestimated how much demand there was going to be and how many properties were contaminated.

So it was a failure from the start,now many cities and states look at it as a lottery machine which has compounded the problem.

Add to that the public outcry over pollution has pushed the EPA passing so many regulations that nobody can comply with them.

Every homeowner or renter is in violation of EPA pollution control standards.

You bought a replacement battery for your car,you bring the old one in for a core replacement,that company then sells it to a rebuilder,that rebuilder ships it to China to be rebuilt.

China takes stuff like that and dumps it in the village square,the people that live in the village grabs one,takes it to his house or shack,dumps the battery acid on the ground then breaks it open and separates the materials.

Then the government comes in and buys the lead,the plastic parts get thrown in a pile.

So in theory that Chinese person can now sue you because they have lead poisoning and their backyard is contaminated from dumping the acid on the ground,which goes into their drinking water.

Because you are responsible for that battery,even if you properly disposed of it,you are still responsible for everything it contains until it becomes a new battery again.

The taxpayers are being scammed with green energy tax credits also,because any company can get them,then sell the ones they do not use to a larger company that pollutes beyond EPA guidelines but can pay the fines with the tax credits.

Thats billions of dollars taxpayers are spending every year to save the planet,but doing zero to actually save the planet.

It’s all a scam,you can pollute as much as you want,you just have to pay extra for when you pollute over the allowance of the clean air standards.

These people are not scamming,they are working the system as designed,they just did not want to pay their kick up which comes in the form of a fine.

That’s why the EPA went after them,if they had just paid the fine instead of trying to buck the system and fight it it would have been over with.

It’s like paying protection money to the mob,do not pay it,get beat up.

Its all negotiable,EPA says , you have a million dollar fine,the newspaper prints that the EPA busted somebody for being bad and the fine was a million dollars.

The public says yay they are going after the nasty people destroying the planet,good job.

But in the background the company settles for $200k cash which is considered the cost of doing business in order to make $5 million in profits.

They just add a little more to the cost of goods sold and the consumer pays it back anyways.

Billions of dollars being made off of pollution and thousands of government employees on the payroll,do you really think they want it to go away?

They want you to pollute,it’s job security.