The filing of an amended consent decree to an old Superfund site recently caught the attention of environmental lawyers around the country because it added a vapor intrusion remedy to a decades-old site.  See Joint Stipulation to Amend Consent Decree (Dkt. 74), United States v. Intel Corp. and Raytheon Co., 91-CV-20275 (N.D.Calif. Filed Dec. 21, 2011). 

The site at issue is the Middlefield-Ellis Whisman (MEW) Superfund Study Area in Mountain View and Moffett Field, California, which was the subject of a 1992 consent decree.  During the 1960s and 1970s, several industrial companies manufacturing semiconductors, electronics, and other products released volatile organic compounds (VOCs) into the environment, primarily trichloroethylene (TCE), which later mixed with similar releases from nearby U.S. Navy and NASA contaminant sources. 

To read more about this matter, please read Bill Wagner's recent blog post on Commonground.

This article was also published in the National Law Review on January 13, 2012.