While a New Jersey judge approved the state’s 5 million settlement with ExxonMobil, he expressed concern over delayed cleanup at a polluted creek, which a state lawmaker says could open up a route to appeal the decision. They say the settlement is just a fraction of the billions of dollars New Jersey should have recovered.
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State Superior Court Judge Michael Hogan concluded Tuesday that the settlement is “fair, reasonable, in the public interest, and consistent with the goals of the Spill Compensation and Control Act”, the Star-Ledger reported.
New Jersey sued Exxon Mobil for natural resources damage in 2004.
Christie’s administration has hailed the deal as the nation’s second-largest of its kind against a corporate polluter.
The deal covered properties such as the gas stations that were not part of the lawsuit. From $225 million, $50 million are expected to go in site remediation, $50 million to state’s legal cost and $125 to the state general funds.
Ted Wells, an attorney for Exxon, said at a hearing last month that while the state had claimed it was owed $8.9 billion, the oil giant’s liability was exactly “zero dollars”, calling the deal “a compromise being made after 11 years of hard-fought litigation”. “Through this settlement, we have ensured the continuation of ExxonMobil’s cleanup obligation at these contaminated sites, and held the company financially accountable through a historic Natural Resource Damages settlement”.
Environmental groups and elected officials who tried to block the deal were quick to decry its approval Tuesday, and indicated they would continue to fight it.
Assemblyman John S. Wisniewski (D-19) called the decision a “loss” for the people of New Jersey. It calls for the oil company to pay for environmental remediation at the sites for an as-yet-unknown cost.
In its final brief before proposing the settlement, the state described the scope of the environmental damage resulting from the discharges “as obvious as it is staggering and unprecedented in New Jersey”.
Following the announcement of the deal, a 60-day public comment period that ended on June 5 started. The vast majority of the 16,013 public comments received by the court opposed the settlement, according to Judge Hogan’s ruling.
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Alan Jeffers, a spokesman for Irving, Texas-based Exxon, called the accord a “fair and reasonable conclusion” that offers “certainty and finality”.
