“Soil and Groundwater Pollution Remediation Act”(hereunder referred to as “the Act”)was promulgated in 2000 and had an overall revision in 2010. In comparison with other environmental laws, this is a relatively new law. Therefore, to ensure the legality of administrative acts, it is indispensible to rely on a professional legal team. The objective of this project was aimed to provide a comprehensive legal consulting service, including litigation and non-litigation matters, and to assist competent authorities at all levels to resolve the legal ambiguities and discrepancies concerning the Act. The team completed in this project the main results of work as follows: (1) to respond to 14 legal questions presented by the environmental agencies, and to provide 35 legal opinions in addition; (2) to represent EPA or local government agencies in dealing with 2 administrative appeals and 20 litigation cases, and obtaining satisfactory results in almost all of these cases; (3) to draft 2 planning reports on the recovery plan for remediation costs incurred in contaminated sites, in order to facilitate the enforcement of the Act; (4) to process cost recovery action for contaminated agricultural lands; (5) to draft, edit and publish “Guidelines for Soil and Groundwater Pollution Remediation and its Cost Recovery”, and to print 300 copies for reference; (6) to assist in developing “Searching Data Bank” for legal issues concerning the Act; (7) to research on the laws and regulations of England and U.S.A, and make a comparative study between our law and the afore- mentioned, and finally provide substantial advices on our legal system concerning the issues of: (a) rewarding policies relating to soil and groundwater pollution remediation, (b) distribution of responsibilities among PRPs and (c) the scope and items of costs to be prepaid by the Soil and Groundwater Pollution Remediation Fund; (8) to introduce, translate and analyze relevant laws and regulations in China and France, and to study on the issue of state compensation and soil and groundwater pollution on military sites, so as to provide reference for our legal practice and law amendment; (9) to sort out 20 pertinent previous court judgments and 1 administrative interpretation letter issued by EPA in past years concerning the Act, and to analyze some of those worthy of reference, so as to describe more complete outlines on the practice operation; (10) to arrange a two-day legal education conference for the personnel in environmental agencies, so that the environmental officers may have a better understanding of the Act and may solve the encountered problems in enforcing the Act. Finally, in connection with the afore-mentioned researching results and the outcome of assisting process, the team provided some suggestions from both legal and practical aspects.

Soil and Groundwater Pollution Remediation Act, Cost Recovery Claim, Guidelines for Soil and Groundwater Pollution Remediation and its Cost Recovery