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Chico Service Station, Inc. and Jose Chico v. Sol Puerto Rico Limited

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Before Lipez, Leval, *fn1 and Thompson, Circuit Judges.

LIPEZ, Circuit Judge. This appeal requires us to assess the propriety of Burford abstention in a citizen suit under the federal Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (“RCRA”). Appellants Chico Service Station, Inc. and Jose Chico brought the suit in an effort to force the cleanup of contamination caused by leaking underground storage tanks (“USTs”) at a former gasoline filling station. Their citizen suit represents the latest in a long-running series of proceedings aimed at addressing contamination at the site. In addition to an investigatory proceeding at the Puerto Rico Environmental Quality Board (“EQB”) that has been ongoing since leaks were discovered in the early 1990s, appellants have filed two lawsuits in commonwealth courts over the past decade related to the contamination of the site.

The pendency of these parallel state administrative proceedings led the district court to abstain from hearing the appellants’ federal citizen suit, ordering dismissal on the authority of Burford v. Sun Oil Co., 319 U.S. 315 (1943). Application of the Burford abstention doctrine to RCRA citizen suits is an issue of first impression in this circuit. On careful consideration, we find abstention to be inappropriate, and we therefore vacate the district court’s judgment.

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