기업의 환경책임에 관한 법적 고찰: 한국철강부지 오염에 대한 정화책임을 중심으로

Abstract

Serious environmental contamination at the former Korea Steel Co. site exhibits typical complicated legal issues among various potentially responsible persons. The iron mill had been used for decades for by many different entities. In the past, it was common practice that they dump industrial wastes in the backyards. Recent closeout of the mill and transfer to a developer revealed all the secrets of the past contaminations. Current Soil Preservation Act defines the scope of potentially responsible parties broadly and characterizes as strict, retrospective and joint and several liability. Accordingly, government may issue order to cleanup to any affluent parties. Then they in turn may bring law suit against other potentially responsible parties. vicious circle will be continuing causing cleanup effort be distracted. Ultimately, the benign ‘polluter pays principle’ will turn ‘everyone pays principle.’ Cleanup cost itself could reach hundreds of millions dollars and could be a headache to any corporate financier. To avoid such a risk, developers would turn their interest from old industrial site to undeveloped pristine lands. Already, many old industrial sites which is suspicious for bad environmental practice in the past are in jeopardy not to transfer for any use. Facing this serious problem, we need to prepare better tuned liability system. First, to solve the complicated legal problems among multiple potentially responsible parties, there should be government entity which can arrange finding, negotiating, and allocating the proper responsibility. Second, there should be more reliable standard for allocating liability. Minimus responsible parties should be set aside from the beginning in the picture of the scheme. And for the portion of nonexisting parties should be undertaken by the government. Thirds, there should be clearer standard for innocent purchaser immunity. Fourth, the standard for retrospectivity must be cleared. Finally, we should revisit the question of how clean is clean. Currently Korean environmental standard has a list 16 contaminants and threshold contamination levels for mandatory cleanup. It is highly suspicious whether this is appropriate or not. Now it is time to reconsider to adopt the risk based standards.