[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 167 (Friday, December 3, 1999)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E2535-E2536]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




    CONFERENCE REPORT ON H.R. 3194, CONSOLIDATED APPROPRIATIONS AND 
             DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2000

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                               speech of

                         HON. MICHAEL G. OXLEY

                                of ohio

                    in the house of representatives

                      Thursday, November 18, 1999

  Mr. OXLEY. Mr. Speaker, H.R. 3194 contains a provision exempting from 
Superfund liability certain transactions in recyclable materials. This 
exemption is drawn from S. 1528. While Senators Lott and Daschle  have 
provided a basic description of Congress's intent in passing the 
language, the purpose of this statement is to provide some additional 
detail on two particular provisions: Sec. 127(g) on the liability of 
other parties at affected Superfund sites, and Sec. 127(i) on the 
effect on completed actions.
  New Sec. 127 of CERCLA provides that parties who engaged in certain 
transactions involving recyclable materials ``shall not be liable'' 
under the provisions of Superfund. Subsection (g) describes the effect 
of this bill on the Superfund liability of owner/operators who remain 
liable at a site. This provision clearly provides that at a Superfund 
site where some parties are exempted from liability by Sec. 127, the 
remaining non-exempt owner/operators at the site should not face 
increased liability as a result of the enactment of Sec. 127. As a 
result, the liability of owner/operators is to be determined as if 
Sec. 127 had not been enacted, using the usual and customary factors 
considering the relative contribution of all parties, both exempt and 
non-exempt. This provision ensures that any exempted share created by 
operation of this section is not transferred to owner/operators.
  New Sec. 127 also contains transition language which governs how the 
recycled materials exemption is intended to affect Superfund liability 
in pending or concluded actions. Sec. 127(i) provides that the 
exemptions from CERCLA liability shall not affect any concluded 
judicial or administrative action or any pending judicial action 
initiated by the United States prior to enactment. One reason for this 
amendment is to ensure that where a judicial or administrative action 
has been fully complied with, this bill will not force persons who 
believed that they had fully settled their liability and claims to 
revisit those issues.
  However, where a consent decree or other judicial order requires 
enforcement of its terms after the date of enactment, nothing in this 
section should be interpreted to prevent a person subject to such 
future enforcement from revisiting the validity of those future 
obligations in light of the passage of this legislation.

[[Page E2536]]

Sec. 127(i) should not be interpreted as leading to the fundamentally 
inequitable result that a person could be forced at some future date to 
take actions to abide by a consent decree where the legal predicate for 
the consent decree has changed so substantially that it no longer has a 
foundation in federal law or conflicts in part with federal law. 
Congress does not intend the transition language to overrule Supreme 
Court precedent holding that ``parties have no power to require of the 
court continuing enforcement of rights the statute no longer gives.'' 
System Federation No. 91 v. Wright, 364 U.S. 642, 652 (1961). Nothing 
in this legislation prevents parties from filing motions under rule 
60(b) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure to re-open the consent 
decree with respect to future obligations.

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