(The Associated Press circulated the following on October 1)
LIVINGSTON, Mont. — The city of Livingston, six businesses and nearly 100 residents have filed a lawsuit against Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway over rail yard pollution they say hasn’t been properly cleaned up.
The lawsuit, filed Thursday in District Court in Livingston, also names Envirocon, the company’s environmental consultant.
The lawsuit claims that for decades, BNSF caused the release of “alarming quantities” of hazardous materials such as diesel, toxic solvents, lead and battery acids into the soils, surface waters and groundwater in the City of Livingston.
Those materials are “known to cause serious chronic and fatal diseases including, though not limited to, various forms of cancer, birth defects, pulmonary diseases, neurological diseases, and other diseases of the lungs and respiratory systems,” the plaintiffs claim.
BNSF and Envirocon knew the extent of the toxic spills, and failed to clean up the chemicals or warn the plaintiffs of the jeopardy to their “health, welfare and property values” and made false representations to members of the public about the investigation of the Livingston site and the cleanup, the suit states.
The plaintiffs are asking for a complete cleanup of all the contaminated area in Livingston, actual damages and punitive damages “sufficient to punish” and deter similar wrongdoing, the lawsuit states.
BNSF Director of Public Affairs, Gus Melonas, said Friday the company was reviewing the lawsuit. Envirocon officials couldn’t be reached for comment on Saturday.
In March 2006, Gov. Brian Schweitzer announced the state, tired of the delays in the cleanup, would do the work and bill the company.
Melonas said the railroad had spent $10 million on remediation at the Livingston rail yard and was ready to do more, but said micromanagement, red tape and staffing shortages at the Department of Environmental Quality were holding up approval of cleanup plans.
Within weeks of Schweitzer’s March 2006 announcement, BNSF agreed to the state’s plans for cleaning up the site, said Aimee Reynolds, the state DEQ manager overseeing the cleanup.
Since then, BNSF has drilled wells to determine where the pollution is and built a plant to clean both air and water fouled by decades of rail work, Reynolds has said.