"East Whiteland, Chester County, PA – The Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania today affirmed an earlier decision made by the Environmental Hearing Board that amendments made to a Prospective Purchaser Agreement (PPA) issued pursuant to the Hazardous Substances Cleanup Act between the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection and the developer of the contaminated Bishop Tube site are void.
Responding to a legal challenge filed by the Delaware Riverkeeper Network, the Pennsylvania Environmental Hearing Board (EHB), in a scathing opinion, ruled in 2019 that the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection’s (PADEP) approval of amendments to a Prospective Purchaser Agreement that would allow development of the highly contaminated Bishop Tube site located in East Whiteland, PA is “arbitrary and capricious” and therefore the agreements were void. Today, the Commonwealth Court agreed with the EHB’s assessment, stating that “the essential requirements of section 1113 [of the Hazardous Sites Cleanup Act] were not satisfied in this case, and, in essence, the Amendments were unilaterally implemented on their own accord, in obvious contravention of the statute.”
“The Pennsylvania DEP has failed the East Whiteland community miserably. PADEP has failed to clean up the highly contaminated site for decades, despite recognizing the dangers it poses to the environment and community. Rather than clean up the site, PADEP prioritized negotiating a Sweetheart Deal with the developer that would allow residential development on the site despite ongoing contamination, and for all intents and purposes kept this backroom deal secret from the communities it would harm rather than give them their legally-entitled right to review and comment on it. We are also in court with PADEP challenging their failure to advance site cleanup in a meaningful time frame; in that case too, rather than admit they are wrong and resolve the litigation in order to prioritize securing cleanup, they are in court trying to defend their failure to act. It’s shocking that the courts are having to step in and ensure PADEP does the job of protecting our environment by honoring the law and its constitutional obligation to protect the environmental rights
and natural resources at stake,” said Maya van Rossum, the Delaware Riverkeeper, leader of the Delaware Riverkeeper Network, and intervenor in the case."
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