From: Andy Soos, ENN
Published March 21, 2013 09:18 AM
US Hazardous Waste Grade: D+
Superfund is the common name for the Comprehensive Environmental
Response, Compensation, and Liability Act of 1980 (CERCLA), a United
States federal law designed to clean up sites contaminated with
hazardous substances. Where responsible parties cannot be found, the
Agency is authorized to clean up sites itself, using a special trust
fund. There has been undeniable success in the cleanup of the nation’s
hazardous waste and brownfields sites. However, annual funding for
Superfund site cleanup is estimated to be as much as $500 million short
of what is needed, and 1,280 sites remain on the National Priorities
List with an unknown number of potential sites yet to be identified.
More than 400,000 brownfields sites await cleanup and redevelopment. The
American Society of Civil Engineers has prepared a report card on the
state of the nation on this matter and have given us a D+.
During more than a century of industrial development in the United
States, large volumes of hazardous waste were generated and disposed of,
often in an environmentally unsound manner for a variety of reasons
ranging from lack of knowledge, existing government and industry
policies, and cost.
The National Priority List (NPL), maintained by the EPA, lists the known
sites that release or threaten release of hazardous substances,
pollutants, or contaminants throughout the United States and its
territories. The NPL is intended primarily to guide the EPA in
determining which sites warrant further investigation.
Since 1980, the EPA has investigated more than 47,000 sites suspected of
releasing hazardous substances into the environment. Just over 1,600
sites have been placed on the NPL, and cleanup has been implemented at
more than two-thirds of those sites.
The EPA is also charged with identifying the parties responsible for
contamination of NPL sites and enforcing the cleanup of sites.
Organizations that EPA has deemed potentially responsible parties have
funded cleanup of more than 70% of the sites on the NPL, at an estimated
value of nearly $30 billion. That still leaves a lot of sites that are
not funded by responsible parties. The reasons for this are many but
include the party no longer exists or has no money.
Even as needs have grown, annual congressional appropriations for
Superfund have declined by 40% since its peak of $2 billion in 1998. The
Superfund program has in the past received funding from two sources:
general funds from the U.S.Treasury and balances in the Superfund trust
fund. Prior to 1996, revenues for the trust fund came from dedicated
excise taxes and an environmental corporate income tax. Those taxes
expired in December 1995 and have not be replaced.
Hazardous waste cleanup is a long, hard and expensive process. It might
be done better but at the end there is a need for money to spent on the
process.
To do better, there must be funding. Examples include re-authorization
of the federal Superfund taxes on chemicals, petroleum, and corporations
or create another federal funding mechanism as well as creating economic
incentive programs that consider environmental costs and encourage
hazardous waste reduction for future hazardous waste situations.
For further information see
Report Card.
Landfill image via Wikipedia
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