Reagan Offers $5.3-Billion Plan to Clean Waste Sites

The Reagan Administration, saying it hopes to eliminate the nation’s 2,000 worst toxic waste sites within a decade, proposed Friday to spend an additional $5.3 billion by 1990 on the long-troubled Superfund program--all of it raised from higher levies on private industry and the states.

The federal contribution to Superfund cleanups, about 12% of the $1.6 billion allotted since 1981, would be ended.

President Reagan said in a prepared statement that the proposal “fulfills our commitment to the American people to address the legacy of abandoned hazardous waste sites in an expeditious manner.”

The Environmental Protection Agency forecast that under the plan the number of Superfund sites at which actual cleanup work is under way--now about 163--would leap to 920 by the end of the decade.

But environmentalists and some legislators contend that the proposal would limit dramatically the number of dangerous sites eligible for Superfund aid and would loosen the standards for cleanup work.

Rep. James J. Florio (D-N.J.), who pushed a $10.3-billion Superfund bill through the House last fall, said the Reagan proposal is not a “serious” effort to address the nation’s toxic waste problems. The Republican-controlled Senate already is studying a $7.5-billion Superfund bill.

“In the face of what happened in Bhopal, I can’t believe Congress will back away from the proposition that we need a toxic-chemical safety net,” one Republican Senate aide said, referring to the disastrous chemical leak in India that killed more than 2,000 persons last December.

If approved by Congress, the Reagan plan would more than triple annual spending on the Superfund program, which was designed to speed cleanups of the nation’s most dangerous waste dumps. Nearly 790 dumps have been marked for cleanup so far, and the EPA says the number eventually could approach 2,000.

The $5.3 billion would be raised through an existing tax on crude oil and 42 other chemicals, which accounts for about $300 million annually, and through a new “waste-end tax” on the treatment and disposal of hazardous chemicals, which would net an extra $600 million a year.

State Share Would Double

In addition, the state share of the cost of non-emergency Superfund cleanups, now 10%, would double. The remainder would be recovered in lawsuits filed against companies whose pollutants have been tracked to Superfund sites.

EPA Administrator Lee M. Thomas said the new waste-end tax would encourage proper handling of toxic chemicals by levying a steep $11.13-a-ton fee on the most dangerous disposal method--dumping into landfills--and a lower $2.61-a-ton tax on safer methods such as incineration.

But critics predicted that the tax would backfire. “It’s too easy for polluters to avoid paying the tax by disposing of their waste illegally,” said Eric Draper, a spokesman for the National Campaign Against Toxic Hazards. “We’ll see a return to the era of midnight dumping.”

Ends Aid for Some Sites

Critics also attacked a proposal to narrow the kinds of sites eligible for Superfund aid. The proposal rules out help for sites polluted by legally applied pesticides and other chemicals, some mining activities and some water well fields.

The Environmental Defense Fund said the changes would eliminate Superfund aid for at least 27 well fields--including four in California that provide drinking water for 1 million persons--that have been nominated to the EPA’s Superfund list.

In a news conference, Thomas said the exclusions would “focus” Superfund work on the major concern, abandoned dumps.

“Our purpose in life is not to clean up every site in this country that’s contaminated,” Thomas said.