Superfund: ‘Cleaning Up or Messing Up?’ : Hazardous Waste Program Ineffective, Report to Congress Says

The Superfund program has been largely ineffective, using improper technologies to clean up hazardous waste sites and in some cases failing to fully remove toxic materials from landfills across the nation, according to a congressional report released Monday.

Although Congress has directed the Environmental Protection Agency to better coordinate its programs to eliminate hazardous waste, the effort is poorly organized and in many cases run by improperly trained employees, the study by the Office of Technology Assessment said.

“Are we cleaning up the mess or messing up the cleanup?” asked the report, in detailing the case histories of 10 hazardous sites. “In the eighth year of the Superfund program, this question is still being asked.”

The study, which was unveiled at a hearing of the oversight subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, found a few bright spots: The EPA’s cleanup of Love Canal, a notorious toxic waste site near Niagara Falls, was praised for its thoroughness, as was the cleanup of the Operating Industries Inc., site in Monterey Park.

Environmentalists’ Report

Later in the day, a coalition of environmental groups released an equally scathing review of Superfund activities. The report, produced by the Sierra Club, the National Resources Defense Council and other groups, identified the “10 worst” cases of EPA mismanagement of Superfund sites in the nation and blasted the agency for failing to aggressively clean up toxic waste.

However, EPA officials denounced these studies as “piecemeal” efforts that looked at a small number of case histories and drew “overly broad, sweeping conclusions,” according to J. Winston Porter, a Superfund administrator.

“This was not a serious review of what we are doing, because we have cleanup projects under way at more than 850 sites, and we are using the most appropriate technologies,” Porter said. “It (the congressional study) does a real disservice to our work.”

Since it began in 1980, the Superfund program has received more than $5 billion to clean up the nation’s most serious toxic waste sites. These areas are rated for the severity of their toxic contamination and then placed on an official Superfund list.

The program was renewed in 1986 with a mandate from Congress to use the most permanent and effective technologies in cleaning up the sites. Legislators also directed EPA not to subordinate these priorities to the cost of the work.

But that has not always happened, according to the report.

An “incomplete” procedure was approved by the EPA for use at four Superfund sites in Oklahoma, Missouri, Texas and Wisconsin, congressional researchers found.

Conclusion Unsupported?

In a review of the Texas site, they determined that “no treatability study supported the conclusion” that it was safer to bury the waste found there rather than incinerate the toxic materials.

At the Wisconsin site, the report criticized EPA for approving a “compacted earth cover” over soil contaminated with lead and chromium, even though “this was a textbook example” of appropriate use of more sophisticated removal technology.

At the same time, in an example of the agency’s inconsistency, the EPA took a different approach at a cleanup of a liquid waste incinerator facility near Cincinnati, the report said. Confronted by more than 8,000 drums of bulk liquids including acids, solvents, p1702065257that it would be unsafe to bury the waste at the site using a procedure called “capping.”

“There are no data available on the long-term effectiveness and permanence of . . . caps,” an EPA report said. The agency opted for a more permanent cleanup that included removing the toxic materials from the site.

Decision-Making

Another problem is that EPA has decentralized the decision-making for toxic waste cleanups, the report said, adding that many of the workers making Superfund decisions are inexperienced.

“Even after eight years, cleanup technology is a new and fast-changing field and the work force is relatively young and inexperienced,” the report said. “Recent college graduates are often put in charge of multimillion-dollar projects . . .. These people have had no direct experience . . . and they have almost no one to learn from, as turnover is high.”

In a major recommendation, the report suggested that EPA centralize more of its Superfund decisions. This would cut down on the confusion, unnecessary costs and ineffective technologies currently used at some toxic waste sites, it added.

But Porter rejected these findings. He said that the EPA also has been directed by Congress to consider “cost-effective” technologies where feasible and that balancing the demands of permanent cleanups with other considerations is a complex process.

“We have been directed by Congress to get the biggest bang for the buck,” he said. “They wanted us to spend the money wisely, to spread it over as many sites as possible, and that’s exactly what we have tried to do.”