Benson’s Mag Ruling Overturned on 3-0 Appeals Court Vote
No CommentsBy JUDY FAHYS
The Salt Lake Tribune
August 18, 2010 10:41AM
Federal regulators may well have the authority after all to decide how a Utah magnesium plant manages its hazardous waste, under a Denver appeals court’s ruling released Tuesday.
The 10th Circuit Court of Appeals threw out an Oct. 17, 2007, decision by U.S. District Judge Dee Benson that US Magnesium in Tooele County is exempted from the nation’s cradle-to-grave hazardous waste law, the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA).
In short, the appeals court said the Environmental Protection Agency can update its “tentative” interpretation of a regulation into a final one without additional public input. It ordered Benson to reconsider the case.
Is it any wonder we are in an environmental quagmire. Action began on this issue in 2001. The case was eventually decided by Judge Benson in 2007. Three years later the Appeals Court overturns the decision and orders Benson to reconsider the case, thus it is still unresolved. This is a near total failure of the court system. All this delay has been worth millions to Mag Corp and to New York businessman Ira Rennert, and the public be damned.The corporate polluters are benefited by the slow moving court system and the earth and its inhabitants suffer irreparable damage.
The delay in this decision is far more devastating than the long and tedious process of the death penalty. This needs fixed, and who will fix it? Nobody. This is a horrible condemnation of our justice system.
“Even under the case law US Magnesium asks us to follow, the agency is at liberty to adopt without notice and comment a reasonable interpretation of that ambiguous regulation,” said the opinion written by Judge Neil M. Gorsuch and joined by the two other judges on the appeals panel.
Although neither side has said what it will do next, it is possible the ruling will finally settle the two-decade-old (more…)


