A Promising Reform for State Superfund : Because of its significance, toxic-cleanup bill must not be rushed into law

Few who have had a hand in trying to clean up any of the 8,000 or so toxic waste sites on California’s Superfund list would dispute that the laws governing that process could stand improvement. The effort has been slow, incredibly costly and characterized by bitter and protracted legal battles. In short, the state program has the same systemic problems that plague the managers of the federal Superfund list--1,200 sites that generally pose an even greater danger to public health than those on the state list.

Given that reform is manifestly needed, is a new law the answer? Senate Bill 923, which already has passed the Senate and is now moving rapidly through the Assembly, is designed to expedite cleanup at 30 state sites.

The legislation, proposed by Sen. Charles M. Calderon (D-Whittier), would create a narrowly circumscribed model or pilot program in California, significantly streamline and expedite the cleanup process at the 30 locations and permit greater latitude in the cleanup standards to be met.

Like proposed federal reforms, this bill would not require that all sites be clean enough to be used for new housing subdivisions or schools. Sites where the next likely use was, say, an industrial facility could be cleaned to a less rigid standard. Of course, adhering to less exacting standards would also limit the future uses of the properties involved and perhaps their long-range profitability.

Arguably, SB 923 would do little more than make it easier to clean up those state Superfund sites that were, because of the nature and extent of the pollution there, already easy to detoxify. Sites could be part of this model program only if all parties responsible for cleanup agreed or if interested parties agreed to pay the cleanup shares of parties unwilling to participate.

There are strong incentives for participation: Once the parties agreed on shares of liability, arbitrators would decide a host of technical issues including the appropriate remedial action. No doubt this process would work much more quickly and efficiently than the endless, acrimonious litigation through which these decisions now are made. The rules would also allow property owners to put cleaned portions of sites back into productive use.

Is a narrowly defined experiment such as this worth a try? Yes, but the bill’s complexity and the wholesale revisions made to it in recent weeks give us pause. Many view the measure as a template for future state and federal Superfund reform. Accordingly, lawmakers need time for a careful review of the amended language at the beginning of the next legislative session, rather than rushing it through now.