ARC Ecology v. United States Department of the Air Force

A decade after the United States vacated its occupation of Clark Air Force Base (“Clark”) and Subic Naval Base (“Subic”) in the Philippines, the plaintiffs-appellants (“the appellants”) seek to invoke specialized statutory procedures under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (“CERCLA”), 42 U.S.C. §§ 9601 et seq., to compel the U.S. government to perform a preliminary assessment and cleanup of the alleged contamination thereon. As citizens and residents of the Philippines, the appellants argue that CERCLA applies extraterrito-rially to afford them relief. The district court dismissed the appellants’ complaint for failure to state a claim. We affirm because CERCLA does not provide for the extraterritorial application sought by the appellants.

I

A. Statutory and Regulatory Background

In 1980, the 96th Congress enacted CERCLA in response to the “serious environmental and health risks posed by industrial pollution.” United States v. Best-foods, 524 U.S. 51, 55 , 118 S.Ct. 1876 , 141 L.Ed.2d 43 (1998). As its name suggests, “ ‘CERCLA is a comprehensive statute that grants the President broad power to command government agencies and private…