Engineering Inc. - September/October 2007 - 6

market watch Superfund: Shifting Political Winds May Prompt Knock of Opportunity By Joe Salimando O ne obvious question hangs over the future of the federal Superfund site cleanup program: What will happen in the 2008 elections? If Democrats grab the White House, plus larger voting majorities in the House and Senate, how much of an emphasis will they put on cleaning up hazardous waste sites? Though the answer will remain a mystery until some time after the November 2008 presidential elections, the Center for Public Integrity in April issued a telling report on the health of the federal government’s hazardous-waste cleanup program. The report notes that: n early half of Americans live within 10 N miles of one of the 1,304 active or proposed Superfund sites. n here are “114 toxic waste sites where T the federal government has determined that the threat to humans from dangerous and sometimes carcinogenic substances is ‘not under control,’” the report says. Some 25 million people live within 10 miles of these sites. n leanup work was started at about 145 C sites in the past six years; nearly three times as many cleanups began during the previous six years. Follow the Money illegal. Thus, some parties are declared “responsible” and forced to pay for activities that were retroactively defined as “wrongdoing.” b. Some sites were polluted by more than one entity. Many such entities have gone out of business or changed hands. As a result, Company X, which purchased Company B, ends up with retroactive liability. c. When multiple parties are responsible for pollution at a given site, the parties tend to squabble—in court—over who pays; it’s not pretty and it does not resolve itself quickly. One solution would be for the federal government to foot the entire bill. At one time, there was a short-lived Superfund tax, but it expired in 1995. An attempt to revive it in 2004 failed. The actual “fund” of the Superfund (i.e., dollars and cents) is empty. Magic Wand Time porate industry. It’s certainly not shocking that a Republican White House and Congress exhibit less of an appetite for penalizing corporate polluters than past Democratic administrations. But is a shift in political power what is needed to spur changes to the fund? To answer “yes” requires us to make some dramatic assumptions: 1. Democratic appointees at the EPA and elsewhere will be more aggressive in making “polluter pays” work. 2. Funds are found elsewhere in the federal budget to pay for accelerated action on Superfund cleanups. 3. A miracle occurs; perhaps an idiot savant will invent a way to turn toxic waste into ethanol, resulting in a sudden rush to “mine” Superfund sites! A sample of the Democratic mindset on Superfund includes: n en. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), chair S of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, named global warming and Superfund her two top priorities, according to a December 2006 article in the Christian Science Monitor. There has been little progress since 2001 in Superfund cleanups—a reality that some political theorists attribute to the Bush administration’s close ties to cortaBLe ONe The U.S. Government Accountability Office reported that funding (in inflation-adjusted dollars) for Superfund fell from $1.8 billion in 1993 to $1.2 billion in 2005. Superfund, the shorthand name for CERCLA—the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act—has encountered money troubles since it was established in 1980. One primary hindrance is that “responsible parties” (those who dumped chemicals that caused pollution on a given site) are supposed to be identified and held responsible through fines. But there are myriad hurdles with this, including: a. At the time of the dumping, certain disposal methods might not have been eNGINeerING INc. SePtemBer / OctOBer 2007 A Broader View of Sites Needing Attention FederaL PrOGram Or reSPONSIBILIty Superfund RCRA Corrective Action Underground Storage Tanks Dept. of Defense Dept. of Energy Civilian Federal Agencies States Total SIteS NeedING remedIatION, 2004 736 3,800 125,000 6,400 5,000 > 3,000 150,000 294,000 cLeaNUP cOSt raNGe IN BILLIONS $24 to $50 $31 to $58 $12 to $19 n/a n/a $15 to $22 $24 to $36 $174 to $253 Source: www.clu-in.org/download/market/2004market.pdf

http://www.clu-in.org/download/market/2004market.pdf

Engineering Inc. - September/October 2007

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