## Facts

- Industrial liquid and solid wastes were illegally dumped beginning in the late 1960s at a 110-acre site in Rose Township, Michigan.
- By 1979, Michigan authorities discovered thousands of waste drums; the state removed about 5,000 drums under an emergency declaration, but soil and groundwater contamination persisted.
- EPA conducted a remedial investigation and feasibility study, issued a Record of Decision (ROD) and an amended ROD, and selected a remedy combining excavation and on-site incineration of heavily contaminated surface soils with “soil flushing” for subsurface soils affecting groundwater.
- The United States (through EPA) negotiated a proposed CERCLA consent decree with multiple potentially responsible parties (PRPs) requiring them to implement the selected remedy at their expense.
- Michigan intervened, objecting that soil flushing was technically unsound given site geology and that the remedy failed to meet Michigan groundwater “anti-degradation” and other environmental requirements asserted as CERCLA ARARs.
- PRPs disputed whether Michigan’s groundwater anti-degradation requirement qualified as an ARAR.

## Issues

1. Whether EPA’s selected remedy and the consent decree were arbitrary and capricious or otherwise inconsistent with CERCLA.
2. Whether, and how, Michigan environmental requirements—especially the groundwater anti-degradation rule—applied as ARARs, and whether the decree failed to attain them under CERCLA § 121.
3. Whether CERCLA preempted Michigan from pursuing additional or different relief that would conflict with a federally approved consent decree.
4. Whether the district court erred in treating Michigan’s groundwater anti-degradation requirement as an ARAR.

## Decision

- The Sixth Circuit affirmed approval of the consent decree.
- The court held EPA’s remedy selection, including soil flushing, was not arbitrary and capricious given the administrative record and EPA’s reasoned responses to objections.
- The court accepted that Michigan’s groundwater anti-degradation requirement could function as an ARAR, but concluded the remedy, considered as a whole, satisfied CERCLA’s ARAR framework.
- The court held CERCLA preempted post-decree state efforts to impose additional or inconsistent remedial obligations that would undermine the decree’s unified cleanup plan.
- The court rejected PRPs’ cross-appeal challenging the ARAR determination.

## Legal Principles

- Judicial review of EPA’s CERCLA remedy selection and a decree implementing it is highly deferential; the agency action is upheld if it reflects consideration of relevant factors and a rational basis, and is not arbitrary, capricious, or an abuse of discretion.
- Under CERCLA § 121, state standards may qualify as ARARs and must be considered; a state may challenge a proposed remedial action before decree entry only on the ground that the decree would fail to attain ARARs.
- ARAR compliance is evaluated against the remedial action as a whole, not by requiring each individual component to independently satisfy every standard in isolation.
- Once a CERCLA consent decree embodying a federally compliant remedy is entered, state-law or state-directed relief that conflicts with or undermines the decree is preempted to preserve a single cleanup scheme.

## Conclusion

The Sixth Circuit upheld a CERCLA consent decree requiring PRPs to implement EPA’s selected remedy, finding EPA’s technical choices reasonable under deferential review, recognizing Michigan’s anti-degradation requirement as potentially applicable but satisfied within the overall remedy, and barring conflicting state efforts to impose different cleanup obligations after decree entry.


United States v. Akzo Coatings of Am., Inc., 949 F.2d 1409 (6th Cir. 1991)