Originating in 1980, Superfund was a program designed to implement clean-ups on hazardous sites through the mutual funding of the polluters and the government. In 49 of the 50 states, there are still sites designated as Superfund sites by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). An undertaking this large is bound to be very expensive, and it has been. Not only is it costly, it takes a long time, long enough for some of the polluters to be long out of business. Leaving some sites to be funded either by corporations that are not responsible for the mess, or for taxpayers to compensate for the lost income.
Superfund, properly known as the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act of 1980, came as a reaction to the first formal findings in the United States of toxic waste dump in Love Canal and Times Beach. To qualify for Superfund cleanup, a site has to be sufficiently toxic, and the requirements are quite scrutinous. The EPA calculates a hazard score, on a scale of 0 to 100, to determine whether to add a site to the National Priority List (NPL). To qualify for an NPL listing, a site must have a score of 28.5 or higher. Once an area is determined to be toxic enough for the program, the site then gets placed on a National Priorities list; a list on which many toxic dumps have remained for upwards of thirty years. Of course, a list that has shifted through tens of thousands of sites would require some ranking mechanism to ensure any sort of order.
The reasons for the dedication of such government resources are multi-tiered, however they are not infallible. The concentration of civilians around these sites poses an elaborate challenge for the EPA to protect large population centers. According to the EPA between 205,349 and 803,100 people live within a mile of 50 of the most hazardous sites. Prolonged exposure to the toxins incubated within those areas is alleged to cause among other things brain cancer and birth defects. However, many of the toxins released into the air and water supply are odorless and invisible, leading many to be unaware of their harmful surroundings. It threatens public health across the country. One in four Americans live within three miles of a Superfund site, and approximately three to four million children live within one mile of a site.
The goal of the program is to ultimately return the sites to their natural state, a goal that requires intensive investment. That investment may often not make sense in terms of fiscal policy. The Brookings Institute researched housing patterns among areas within close proximity of designated Superfund sites. They found that if consumers truly valued the clean-up projects, it would be reflected in the housing market. The market should, in theory, see more new house construction and increasing house prices, as well as a large migration to the area. owe However, for reasons beyond the scope of the study found that none of these occurred. Assuredly, it is not the goal of the EPA to make a profit off of this cleanup but to allocate such funds to a project that does not reinvigorate the area may seem counter-intuitive. After all, just up to 2005 more than $35 billion has been spent on cleanups across the country. Not to mention how much of private funds has been spent.
Moreover, the benefits are not intuitively felt. Even after successful clean-up “decisive evidence of substantial health benefits” has not been seen. Frankly, a stunning accusation if proven true, since the difference in expenses between containing sites that are not on the NPL and those that are amounts to millions of dollars per site. Sites that are not on the NPL are remedied in the most basic of ways, namely limiting exposure by restricting access to the area.
So why allocate federal funds at all if it does not improve the value of its surrounding, and has not been sufficiently proven as a cause for diseases? For one, the toxins found at some of these sites have been linked to cancer thus leaving it would prove a danger to the public. Second, is that it seeks to punish those that are responsible for the damage. Unfortunately for the EPA, the process has been troublesome as regulations and budgetary cuts have seen the portion of private investment into cleanup shrink.
The Competitive Enterprise Institute, a pro-business think-tank, dismisses the notion that Superfund can be seen as anything besides a negative. They look at it from a cost-analysis perspective and comment on the lack of rewards it produces in the immediate future, going so far as to say that “if the federal government truly desired to help people in poorer communities, it would abandon the pretense and stop wasting money on the cleanup projects.”
Steve Cohen of the Earth Institute (link) partially agrees. He remains a proponent of the program, but does agree with some of the systemic failures. His concern is not with the program itself, rather it is that the technology has not caught up to the level that congress required when it passed the program over thirty years ago. He says “detoxification of sediment may be beyond our capacity now,” he said, “but someday it won’t be.”
The New York Times looked at the largest project in the state, the Possaic region, where all 17 miles are polluted and examined possible solutions and the hiccups encompassed with any strategy. Typically, the river is damned up and then it is dredged for chemicals. In the best possible scenario, no chemicals escape while it is transported to a treatment plant. There the solids and liquids are separated, with the solids being carted out to landfills in the west and the water is squeezed out and treated. However for 17 miles to be treated in that manner would generate 11 million cubic yards of waste. To put that in perspective, they scale it as enough to fill the Empire State Building eight times over. Thus impossible to adequately dispose of, even in secluded landfills out west.
States like Utah, have taken advantage of their abundant open spaces to charge substantial disposal fees. UT HB0348 – otherwise known as the Hazardous Waste Amendments “establishes a fee for hazardous waste that contains both demilitarization waste and another hazardous waste component subject to treatment standards” charging $28 for each ton. Considering, just how much waste comes from each clean-up project, the state can generate millions just by providing a dumping ground for waste from thousands of miles away.
The other end of the program is the requirement that the polluter pays. This was designed so that there would be a semblance of balance in who is to pay for the clean-up. After the 1994, Republican takeover of the house, the taxes that were levied against corporations began to expire. Coinciding with the decline in corporate payments, the federal government has also begun to lower their own expenditures towards the program. President Obama for the third consecutive year has proposed cutting funding toward the EPA precisely from the Superfund program. In 2012, the $33 million cut the President has proposed will likely eliminate at least one full cleanup this year, but likely more. Since, not only does the funding go toward cleanup, it is also delegated toward prosecution of those that do not contribute their allocated share.
The question of who is responsible has consistently plagued the program. Under the current legislation past or present owners or operators of a site, the producers of potentially hazardous chemicals, and even the transporters of the waste are potentially responsible under Superfund. The program casts a wide umbrella as to responsibility. Unfortunately, with so many corporations being targeted, the question of fairness poses a conundrum even for environmental advocates. As regulation in the past reflected the stunted views of environmental welfare, corporations did not have the disincentives to change their practices. As such, much of the pollution accumulated in these sites came before the passing of the act in 1980. In that time a substantial portion of responsible parties no longer exist, especially the companies that operated on a smaller scale.
Currently 30% of Superfund sites are “orphan” sites, where the company responsible no longer exists. As such the lost income has to be compensated for, meaning either the citizens’ tax dollars have to be allocated, or the corporations have to bare a larger share. As Cal Dooley, the CEO of the American Chemistry Council notes that in 2004, the EPA collected a record $1.7 billion in cleanup funds from responsible parties. However, that number is what the act called for to be collected annually.
Both national political parties have proposed legislation on how to handle the issue. A significant portion of Republicans in the House have put forth a bill that would reduce the scope of the program. US h2997 would eliminate manure from being considered a “hazardous substance or pollutant or contaminant.” This legislation would mean that the after affects of manure would also not fall under the act, therefore the water included in the process or the bedding, compost or raw materials that were mixed in the manure process would not be eligible for cleanup via funding from the Superfund.
The Democrats in the Senate have countered with another proposal, that like the Republicans’ bill has been stalled in committee since 2011, would extend the tax rates from 1986 on the polluters until 2021. The .12% tax on taxable income enacted in 1986 under the re-authorization act after the initial five year trial of the program. Also, included in that proposal would be a stipulation to recover income from 1986 to 1996, since the income from taxes begin to dwindle after the Superfund tax expired at the end of 1995.
The deprioritizing of the program may come as a result of just what sectors of the population are affected. The concentration of disenfranchised groups around the affected areas, notably large sectors of young, urban, poor minorities likely leads to a political question for many congressmen. Splitting an already tight fiscal budget to alleviate the concerns of neglected communities will likely not score the political points or get the recognition that many worthy causes deserve.
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