RCRA Citizenship Provision Preempts State Law

In the case of Boyes v. Shell Oil Products Company, 2000 W.L. 3724 (January4, 2000), the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit found a Florida statute in direct conflict with RCRA's citizen suit provision and thus preempted. Defendants had operated gasoline stations on properties that had become contaminated by petroleum releases from underground storage tanks. The properties were eligible under Florida's Underground Petroleum Environmental Response Act for funding by the state under its Early Detection Incentive Program. Under that program the Florida DEP assigns a contaminated site a priority ranking and undertakes remediations in accordance with those rankings. A provision of the statute prohibits any person from pursuing any "administrative or judicial action" to require remediation of a contaminated site that is eligible for the EDI program before the state has committed funding for the remediation. The plaintiffs owned property adjacent to the former gasoline station sites and it was undisputed that the plaintiffs' property was contaminated by the petroleum contamination from those sites. Plaintiffs sued the former operators of the gasoline stations under the citizens suit provisions of RCRA. They asked for remediation of the site and attorneys' fees. The District Court dismissed the claim under the "Burford Abstention Doctrine" that is designed to protect complex state administrative processes from undue federal interference and under the "primary jurisdiction doctrine" which keeps courts from deciding issues within the special competence of administrative agencies. On appeal, it was agreed by all parties that the District Court's dismissal was inappropriate if RCRA preempted the Florida law. In the course of its preemption analysis, the court first found that RCRA does not expressly preempt all state law governing underground storage tanks that contain petroleum products. It further found that Congress had not occupied the entire field of underground storage tank regulation. It then decided the question of whether Florida law regulating underground storage tanks directly conflicts with RCRA. Florida had never submitted its underground storage tank program to EPA for approval. If it had, then its program in its entirety could have been enforced. Since it did not, the program is preempted to the extent that there is any conflict with RCRA. Since under Florida law, plaintiffs cannot sue to obtain the relief that they are seeking and under RCRA's citizen suit provision they can, there is a direct conflict. "If allowed to operate in lieu of the RCRA, the Florida statute would patently 'interfere with the methods by which the federal statute was designed to reach its goal'."