UW Tacoma Wants City to Pay for Contamination of Campus by City’s Sewer System
“The University has incurred, and expects to continue incurring, expenses for remedial actions investigating and characterizing the hazardous substances that have migrated, and continue to migrate, onto the Property from the City’s Sewer System”
What a revolting development. It stinks to be them.
The Tacoma News Tribune reports:
UW Tacoma is contaminated. University wants judge to force city to pay, act
The University of Washington is seeking to hold Tacoma legally responsible for the cleanup costs of historical contamination leaking from the city’s sewer system onto portions of the university’s Tacoma branch campus, a court filing shows.
UW filed a lawsuit against Tacoma on Wednesday in Pierce County Superior Court, also requesting that a judge order the city to fix the problem, which reportedly dates back decades, according to the lawsuit.
“The University has incurred, and expects to continue incurring, expenses for remedial actions investigating and characterizing the hazardous substances that have migrated, and continue to migrate, onto the Property from the City’s Sewer System,” the lawsuit said.
In a statement Thursday, the university sought to assure that there were no hard feelings despite taking the city to court.
“The University emphasizes that this action does not diminish the strong, decades‑long partnership between UW Tacoma and the City of Tacoma,” UW said.
However, the lawsuit was necessary to clarify responsibilities and cleanup funding obligations, and to ensure that University of Washington Tacoma could continue to be developed responsibly and sustainably, according to the statement.
Tacoma spokesperson Maria Lee said Thursday that the city and UW were engaged in the Washington State Department of Ecology’s formal environmental review of the site, specifically concerning historical groundwater contamination known as “the Westerly Plume.”
“As is standard in complex environmental cleanups, regulators and technical experts are currently evaluating proposed cleanup alternatives, exploring funding structures, and assessing potential community impacts,” Lee said in a statement. “We will continue working with the Washington State Department of Ecology and the University of Washington Tacoma and look forward to Washington State Department of Ecology’s final determinations.”
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So why should the City of Tacoma have to pay for the faculty that contaminates the UW campus there?
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