Superfund Issue
There have been few environmental problems
that have posed the same level of
concern as that of the hazardous waste
issue. Similarly, few environmental laws
have caused the level of frustration
as that felt towards Superfund, the main
legislative tool that was designed
to address the public fears in regards to
hazardous waste. Superfund is a law
that was passed in 1980. It is formally
known as the Comprehensive
Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability
Act, or CERCLA. It
established a special fund called the Superfund Trust Fund as
a pot of money,
1.6 billion over 5 years, which was originally planned to
finance the clean
up of some 400 sites. Today, Superfund has grown into one of
the nations
largest environmental projects with over 30 billion being spent on
over 1200
sites. The EPA, with the aid of state and tribal governments, is the
agency
charged with implementing and enforcing the Superfund Program. Since
the
Superfund was designed to be used for abandoned sites where the
responsible
parties are unknown or bankrupt, the EPA makes every effort to
identify the
parties responsible for the contamination so they can be held
liable for the
costs of the cleanup. Superfund sites are discovered by local
and state agencies
performing inspections, businesses, the EPA, the Coast
Guard or anybody else who
takes the initiative to report a potentially
hazardous waste site to the
National Hotline Number. When sites are
identified the EPA must decide if it
requires an emergency response, an early
action, or a long-term action. EPA
Overview/Analysis of Superfund uses a
scorecard method called the Hazard Ranking
System (HRS) to determine the
level of danger in a hazardous waste site. If the
site requires immediate
action to eliminate serious risk to human health or the
environment, it will
be dealt with as an emergency response. If a site poses a
threat in the near
future, an early action will be enacted to contain the risk.
Typically,
Early Action goals are to; prevent direct human contact with
contaminants
from the site; remove hazardous materials from the site; prevent
contaminants
from spreading off the site; provide water to residents whose
drinking water
has been contaminated by the site; or temporarily or permanently
evacuate
and, if necessary, relocate nearby residents. Early actions can last
from a
few days up to 5 years. If a site has been polluted for many years, it
may
take a few years to decades to cleanup. For sites such as these,
Long-Term
Actions are taken which include restoring ground water and
taking measures to
protect wetlands, estuaries, and other ecological
resources. The people
responsible for contamination areas are referred to as
Potentially Responsible
Parties (PRPs). The EPA has many ways of
identifying PRPs. EPA investigators
review site files kept by Federal, state
and local agencies, review land deeds
and titles at the local courthouse,
look for names on drums or other hazardous
materials at the site, and
interview employees, former employees or neighbors of
the site. When a
responsible party is found, they can be used to find other
responsible
parties. Once the parties are identified, the EPA generates
information
request letters to get further information concerning the PRPs
ability to pay
for the cleanup action. Overview/Analysis of Superfund Analysis
The
Superfund program is without question a necessity that, even if having
met
none of its intended goals, has managed to enhance the awareness of
the
responsible parties of hazardous waste sites. For that alone it as been
of great
value in reducing the occurrence of hazardous waste sites which
would have
previously developed as a result of environmental ignorance But,
as an effective
tool for cleanup, it's not as successful as had been hoped.
The two major
complaints of Superfund are the enormous costs and the long
delays in processing
a site for cleanup. As of 1996, only about 200 of the
1200 sites listed on the
National Priority List had been completely
cleaned up and with a cost average of
$30 million and 12 years per site. One
of the chief reasons for Superfund's
exploding costs is the free-for-all
pursuit of responsible parties allowed by
the act. Superfund calls for
retroactive liability, meaning that corporate
practices that might have been
perfectly legal, fully permitted and safe under
the law years ago can now be
punished retroactively. Potentially Responsible
Parties are defined under
the law as, (1) those who own or operate a site; (2)
owned or operated a site
at the time of the disposal of wastes; (3) arranged for
disposal, treatment,
or transportation of waste; or (4) accepted waste for
transport. As a result
of the law, the courts have interpreted Superfund as
meaning that any party
that ever touched the waste, no matter how slight their
involvement or minor
the amount, can be held liable for the full cost of
remediation. As a result,
lawyers, consultants, private investigators, and
administrative overhead has
consumed enormous quantities Overview/Analysis of
Superfund of Superfund
dollars. It is estimated that these administrative costs
eat up as much as
35% of the corporate Superfund expenditures, 88% of insurance
company
Superfund expenditures and 50% of public Superfund expenditures. In the
last
15 years attorneys who specialized in environmental litigation
nationwide
have grown from 2,000 to 18,000. Another problem with Superfund is
the Hazard
Ranking System. With preliminary assessments and associated
investigations
taking an average of 4 years to complete, it's no surprise
that thousands of
sites are still pending determination as to health risk. In
addition to the
excessive lag-time involving site assessment, when sites are
assessed through
the HRS system, the single most hazardous substance located
at a sites used to
score the toxicity for all the contaminants at the entire
site. For example, in
South Carolina, the EPA took two surface and more
than 20 subsurface soil
samples of a site. The most contaminated sample of
the approximately 30 which
were taken was used to calculate the soil exposure
pathway in the HRS. Dr.
Richard Goodwin, who is a private environmental
engineer in New Jersey and who
has been involved in over 20 cleanup
operations was quoted as saying:"Does
it make sense to spend millions of
dollars cleaning up a site that only has a
tenth of an ounce of
contamination? I say no. All we're doing in most cases is
throwing money at a
problem without improving public health or the
environment.
Overview/Analysis of Superfund The need for the Superfund
will never go away as
long as the means exists for man to create hazardous
wastes. But, as important
as having a program designed to enhance our health
and environment, is the need
to ensure its effectiveness.