How was this legal?
Lets discuss Policy.
Spoiler Alert: The State of California was found liable for the acid pits leakage. That's right, California was found responsible for the leakage of the super toxic chemicals that deposited into the community of Glen Avon.
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How? What? Why? Story time.
It is ironic to think of the government, the president, or states being sued, but in this case California was not very smart about the managing of this location. "Officials" released nearly 1 million gallons of toxic chemicals that flooded into the community of Glen Avon because they doubted the capability of the existing dams to hold in the chemicals, and pouring rain.
Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act(Superfund) was passed in 1980, and Stringfellow Acid Pits was #1 on this list of designated cleanup sites. This act This act is also known as “superfund” because it provides federal funds to clean up a hazardous waste site. Its purpose is to provide clean up to toxic locations when the reliable parties are not found, or when they fail to act. The creation of this act is a direct response to the existence of uncontained hazardous locations.
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EPA(Environmental Protection Agency) should have began cleanup of the site immediately because of how ridiculously toxic it was. However there is a belief that EPA administrator Anne M. Burford postponed cleanup of the site because she did not want Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown Jr., then governor, who was running for the Senate, to take credit. (This is better than soap operas!)
Spoiler Alert #2: Rita Lavelle and Anne McGill Burford were found guilty of mishandling the Superfund program, and were forced to resign from office along with 22 other officials. When the EPA finally decided to get their life together, residents started witnessing compensation during 1990.
In order to recover cost, the department of Justice filed a lawsuit against 31 individuals; obligating immediate cleanup of the toxic dump site. The lawsuit sought to obtain over 30 million U.S. dollars in cleanup cost from 18 companies (the polluters). Even the Air Force was being sued -- Assistant attorney general believed the air-force was responsible for about 4% of pollution. (What? I know.)
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Policy in relation to the people
Through the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act a civil case was made possible. This law is significant because it is extremely hard to sue someone on environmental basis. It is hard to measure therefore hard to prove, and without proof impossible to prove environmental injustices are taking place.
Court cases were won in favor of 3,800 community residents. They sought $650 million from two dozen companies and government bodies that used the site from 1965 to 1972, but they only received a little over 50 million (with the largest compensation of $43 to 1 individual) because the judge believed they were exaggerating defects from the contaminated site. To make matters worse, not everyone's case was heard. Was justice served?