Pepperell Associates v. United States Environmental Protection Agency

LYNCH, Circuit Judge.

This case illustrates the perils facing a small business that does not determine whether it is subject to regulation under 33 U.S.C. § 1321, the oil spill provision of the Clean Water Act. Pepperell Associates operates a business out of an old textile mill building in Lewiston, Maine. In October 1996, a rupture in a gasket on a boiler caused an oil spill in the boiler room of the building. Some three- to four-hundred gallons of the oil ultimately worked its way into Gully Brook and from there to the Androscoggin River, both navigable waters of the United States. The spill…