NEW JERSEY DEPARTMENT OF ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION, ET
AL. VS. OFRA DIMANT, ET AL.
A-3180-09T2
We uphold the dismissal with prejudice of the DEP's lawsuit
seeking to hold a dry cleaning establishment responsible for
groundwater contamination on neighboring property. Spill Act
strict liability requires proof of some nexus between use or
discharge of a hazardous substance and its contamination of the
surrounding area. In other words, there must be some resultant
damage from the discharge that triggers the need for
remediation. In this case, the DEP failed to prove that any
discharge from defendant's operation of PCE, a volatile organic
compound that evaporates quickly when exposed to air, interacted
with the environment to cause injury necessitating the
incurrence of regulatory response costs. 03-18-11
