Fried v. Sungard Recovery Services, Inc.

925 F. Supp. 364, 1996 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 5693, 1996 WL 210810
Procedural entryThis page is a short order in Fried v. Sungard Recovery Services, Inc.. Read the opinion of the Court — 925 F. Supp. 372
District Court, E.D. Pennsylvania·Decided April 30, 1996·No. Civil Action 95-CV-0878·Published

Opinion

MEMORANDUM

JOYNER, District Judge.

This action is brought under the Clean Air Act (CAA), 42 U.S.C. §§ 7401-7671q (1995). Today we address Defendant Sungard Recovery System’s Supplemental Motion for Summary Judgment, filed at our request to clarify the issues remaining for decision. We requested further briefing focused on the following questions: (1) what constitutes a renovation operation; (2) was the requisite amount of asbestos affected within any one renovation operation so that the National Emission Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants (NESHAPS) for Asbestos, 40 C.F.R. §§ 61.140 — 61.157, requirements were triggered; (3) if so, were any NESHAPS re *366 quirements violated (4) and if so, are these violations continuing or were they repeated. Findings made in our preliminary memorandum may be modified by this memorandum given the additional arguments and evidence presented by the parties. Plaintiff alleges three general areas of violation and we will use that framework to structure this Memorandum.

I. 1992-1993 MEGACENTER EXPANSION

The first question we ask is, what is a planned renovation operation. The NESH-APS define a planned renovation operation as a “renovation operation, or a number of such operations, in which some [Regulated Asbestos-Containing Material] RACM will be removed or stripped and that can be predicted. Individual nonseheduled operations are included if a number of such operations can be predicted to occur during a given period of time based on operating experience.” 40 C.F.R. § 61.141.

Plaintiff reads this definition to include all renovation activities that are planned together and taken as a part of a larger project. With this reading, he contends that all of the projects that Defendant treated as part of its 1992-1993 MegaCenter Expansion comprise one planned renovation operation.

For the purposes of understanding the following discussion, it is not necessary to know what each project was, but simply to understand that Defendant had possession of the sixth floor of 401 North Broad Street in 1980. From 1981 on, it leased additional space and conducted renovations in a piece-meal fashion. In 1991, Defendant and its contractors determined that in order to best serve the future needs of the company, it was necessary to create a Master Plan to govern all future renovations. To that end, Defendant and several contractors met over a series of months to plan the MegaCenter Expansion on the Sixth and Seventh floors.

According to Defendant’s records, the projects making up the MegaCenter Expansion were:

# 1 UPS, Sixth Floor/Seventh Floor
# 2 Sixth Floor Renovations
#3 Ready-Conditioned Expansion, Seventh Floor
# 4 Lobby/Administration, Seventh Floor UPS (Phase 2), Site Prep.
#5 Seventh Floor, T & O Conversion Services
# 6 Sixth Floor, Phase II (including corridor flooring)
# 7 Mezzanine Package
#8 Seventh Floor, T & O Conversion (Northside)
# 9 UPS (Phase III, Generator and Loading Dock)

Defendant’s records demonstrate that although each project was individually priced and scheduled, the entire project was coordinated together. Therefore, Plaintiff maintains, they comprise one planned renovation operation.

In contrast, Defendant contends that a planned renovation operation is any discrete renovation project. It stresses the fact that the above-mentioned projects were individually priced, scheduled and budgeted and maintains that this shows that they were independent renovation operations. For this reason, Defendant argues that the analysis is properly focused on each project by itself, and not the conglomerate MegaCenter Expansion.

We find that at least for the purposes of summary judgment, the MegaCenter Expansion is one planned renovation operation and so we look at all the individual activities as part of a greater whole. Having answered the first question, we turn to the second; whether the triggering amount of asbestos was involved in the renovation' operation.

The NESHAPS’s notice and work practice responsibilities are only implicated if a minimum amount of RACM is to be “stripped, removed, dislodged, cut, drilled, or similarly disturbed during the course of a renovation.” 40 C.F.R. § 61.145(a)(4). 1 The parties prof *367 fer different approaches to resolve whether the minimum amount was at issue in any planned renovation operation. They call these the “calendar year,” “given time period” and “single operation” approaches.

We find that the regulations’ language adequately explains the appropriate standard, however. The regulations state that to determine if the minimum amount of asbestos is involved in “planned renovation operations involving individual nonscheduled operations, [we should] predict the combined additive amount of RACM to be removed or stripped during a calendar year.” 40 C.F.R. § 61.145(a)(4)(iii). Accordingly, if the minimum amount is disturbed in any one calendar year, then the entire renovation operation, even if taking place over more than one year, is covered by the NESHAPS. For example, if a renovation operation is scheduled to take ten years, and if in each year 16 square feet of RACM is to be removed, the operator can predict that during the entire renovation operation a total of 160 square feet of RACM will be removed. Under our reading of the regulations, however, the NESHAPS would not be triggered. This makes sense because the amount of RACM to be disturbed each year is negligible. In contrast, if the ten year renovation operation is to involve the removal of 160 square feet of RACM in the first calendar year but no more thereafter, the NESHAPS would appropriately be triggered because the amount of RACM to be disturbed in the first calendar year is of sufficient magnitude that the NESHAPS’s protections should be implicated.

So, we ask whether Plaintiff has created a material issue of fact as to whether, in either 1992 or 1993, at least 160 square feet or 260 linear feet of RACM was disturbed during the course of the MegaCenter Expansion. Plaintiff only alleges that one particular activity involved the requisite amount of RACM, that being the removal of tile from the Sixth Floor corridor in 1992. He apparently agrees that the 1993 activities did not cumulatively disturb the minimum amount of asbestos.

When Defendant took over the Sixth Floor in 1980, it was one large, open area with no interior walls. To make the space more useable, Defendant built interior walls, and of necessity, corridors.

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Fried v. Sungard Recovery Services, Inc., 925 F. Supp. 364, 1996 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 5693, 1996 WL 210810 (E.D. Pa. 1996).

925 F. Supp. 364 (Fried v. Sungard Recovery Services, Inc.) — published by Counsel Stack Legal Research, free access to 12M+ legal documents.

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