No Veto Required

Tax reform aside, passage of a new Superfund law may be the real tour de force of the 99th Congress. The final version of this monumental piece of health and environmental legislation cleared Congress by a combined House and Senate vote of 474 to 35 (88-8 in the Republican-controlled Senate). Yet, the Administration threatens to veto the bill because it frowns on one segment of the measure’s complex financing mechanism.

The existing Superfund program to clean up the nation’s toxic waste dumps has limped along on emergency appropriations for a year since the original financing provisions expired. Lee M. Thomas, Environmental Protection Agency chief, has been pleading with Congress to complete action on a new law so that the program would not become a total shambles.

Over at the White House, spokesman Larry Speakes said, “We’d be satisfied if they continued the present method of funding of Superfund, but a (new) tax won’t do at all.” The problem is that the oil and chemical industries paid the bulk of the $1.6 billion cost for the first phase of the program, during which only a handful of toxic dump sites were purged. It is only fair now that the burden be spread more widely, particularly since the price tag for the next five years is nearly $9 billion.

The oil and chemical industries still would pay more than $4 billion of the reauthorized program. Another $1.25 billion would come out of general revenues. What the Administration objects to is a broad-based levy on large corporations amounting to $2.5 billion, claiming that it is a new tax. It is not entirely new, however, since the tax would be based on the alternative minimum income tax established by the tax reform act of 1986. Virtually every industry in America has contributed to the toxic waste legacy in some fashion. It is only equitable that they share in financing the solution.

Superfund is not an expendable environmental program. It is a critical effort to cope with a massive societal problem that threatens the health and well-being of Americans everywhere. One of the projects that would be delayed without the new legislation is the cleanup of the 120,000-acre San Fernando Valley ground-water basin that provides drinking water for half a million Los Angeles-area residents.

Congress is so committed to this effort that 81 senators have written to President Reagan in impassioned terms urging him to overcome his tax objections and sign the bill into law. “A mother whose child has been poisoned by toxic waste in the water will not ask whether a broad-base tax mechanism was used to fund Superfund,” the letter said. Sen. Alan K. Simpson of Wyoming, the No. 2 GOP leader in the Senate, said a presidential veto would be “a great misreading of this body” and the mood of the public.

While our 20th Century economy and life style were driven to new heights by the miracles of technology, we tended to tuck the nasty byproducts and dregs under the nearest rocks. Now, we must pay the price. The new Superfund legislation is the way to do it. The President should sign it at the earliest opportunity.