Superfund Cleanup Is Ineffective, Study Finds : Toxic Waste: An investigation for Congress concludes that polluters are let off the hook. But EPA criticizes the findings as being outdated.

The multibillion-dollar Superfund toxic waste project is failing to clean up sites that pose an imminent danger while spending more than half of its resources on management, long-range studies and questionable technology, the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment said Thursday.

The report was quickly criticized by both the Environmental Protection Agency, which said the study was outdated when it was released, and the chairman of the congressional panel that ordered the investigation, who termed the study too speculative.

The two-year study contended that 50% to 70% of the $4.4 billion spent so far was used ineffectively by government and industry.

Investigators estimated that half of the project’s effort is being spent to study “speculative future risks,” and that three-fourths of the cleanups are “unlikely to work over the long term.”

“The closer one gets to Superfund’s implementation, the more that many cleanups look like decision-making has worked backward,” the OTA concluded.

The report also charged that the agency is allowing cheaper, less effective cleanups at some sites to encourage companies responsible for creating dumps to foot the bill voluntarily.

The OTA cited “a pattern of EPA selecting less stringent cleanup technologies to obtain voluntary or negotiated settlements with responsible parties (polluters).” Polluters may have saved as much as $1 billion in 1988 by using less effective cleanup methods, the report estimated.

Efforts to reconcile competing interests in the massive undertaking, the report said, have created a “Superfund syndrome.”

“Analysis breeds paralysis as stakeholders with different perceptions of risk and different priorities fight data with data. Contractors keep busy, reports pile up, contamination spreads into soil and ground water, (and) many sites wait to get into the system.”

The EPA, which administers the much-criticized program launched eight years ago, estimates that it will need to add 900 sites to its current list of 1,200 priority sites.

But the OTA estimated that the number of new sites to be identified could be 10 times that.

“The nation,” it said, “has probably spent only about 1% or 2% of what ultimately might be spent by all parties to clean up chemically contaminated sites--now roughly estimated by OTA at $500 billion over 50 years.”

Created in 1980 as a crash program to get rid of toxic waste dumps, the program has spent about $4.4 billion, but the scope of the toxic waste problem has grossly outpaced the program’s ability to react. The OTA suggested the project needs to be fundamentally reorganized.

EPA officials suggested that much of the criticism leveled by the study already has been addressed since the Bush Administration named William K. Reilly head of the agency.

The new administrator ordered an intensive review of the Superfund program last summer and recommended 50 substantive changes in it.

“There are certainly benefits to be gleaned from the OTA report,” said Lewis Crampton, a spokesman for the EPA. “There is a lot of overlap in what they cover and what we covered, but they do not give us credit for addressing a lot of the issues they talk about.”

Rep. John D. Dingell (D-Mich.), chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, criticized the study done for his panel.

“I am extremely concerned,” he said in a letter to OTA director John H. Gibbons, “that the constructive aspects of the report will be overshadowed by its excessive emphasis on speculative statistics. . . .

“Certainly, there is an overwhelming consensus among all parties (including EPA) that the Superfund program could and should make more efficient use of its resources. But I do not believe the report has presented persuasive evidence to support its conclusion that 50% to 70% of Superfund spending by government and industry has been inefficient, and I am troubled that this figure is likely to be misconstrued.”

In spite of limited progress, skyrocketing costs, public criticism and the staggering cost of getting rid of the dumps, the report declared the Superfund program should be extended by Congress.

“Lack of public confidence in Superfund and criticism of Superfund may cause some people to discount the real environmental problem and abandon the effort,” it said. “With billions of dollars at stake . . . building public confidence in Superfund is more necessary than ever.”

BACKGROUND

The Superfund toxic waste project was created in 1980 as a short-term, $1.6-billion cleanup effort. But it soon became clear the problem was not likely to be solved quickly or cheaply. In 1985, Congress reauthorized Superfund, adding $8.5 billion. To date, the fund has spent $4.4 billion but has cleaned up only a fraction of the 1,200 sites targeted. The new study for Congress estimates there could be 9,000 more toxic sites that need attention--an effort it estimated would cost $500 billion over 50 years.