Oversight of Superfund Sites May Be Restored

The state Senate on Monday approved a bill that would restore the authority of the state Department of Toxic Substance Control to identify and clean up Superfund hazardous waste sites.

The legislation, however, failed to resolve the major issue of who must pay to clean up contamination left by polluters who go out of business.

The department’s authority over Superfund sites lapsed Jan. 1, though emergency administrative regulations have enabled the agency to continue its operations.

Typically, in the case of a Superfund site, the state issues a mandatory cleanup order against a recalcitrant polluter. In most other cases, the polluter voluntarily agrees to help pay the costs of the cleanup.

Without debate, the Senate approved and sent to the Assembly a bill (SB 47) to permanently restore the department’s regulatory authority. The vote was 33 to 2.

A department spokesman said officials were pleased by the Senate’s action and are hoping for swift approval by the Assembly.

Spokesman Ron Baker said no disruptions in the department’s Superfund program have occurred since the law lapsed. But, he added, no new Superfund sites have been identified either.

“The program has moved as we had anticipated,” he said.

Statewide, Baker said, there are 403 contaminated sites under the department’s jurisdiction, including 268 Superfund sites.

Sen. Byron Sher (D-Stanford), who has worked more than a year to preserve the agency’s regulatory powers over Superfund sites, said the bill represented a compromise among various interests: environmentalists, oil companies and other business groups.

He indicated that the opposing sides favored having a law on the books regulating contaminated sites, because an unregulated arena presents legal uncertainties.

But Sher conceded that his bill does not resolve the issue of who must pay for cleaning so-called “orphan sites,” hazardous dumps where the polluters responsible for the contamination have vanished or are out of business.

The bill establishes an orphan site cleanup account, but provides no revenue source to fund it.

Though the bill is incomplete, Sher said the measure’s supporters agreed to move the bill through the Legislature and then try and resolve the funding issue after the state’s budget picture becomes clearer in May.

Until the law lapsed, the cleanup of abandoned sites was paid for by a combination of taxpayer funds, fees paid by hazardous materials producers and dischargers, and environmental fees levied on most corporations.

However, some waste producers last year balked at being billed to help finance the cleanup of sites created by polluters who had become defunct or insolvent, a major reason the law was allowed to expire. They favored passing more of the cost on to taxpayers.

As part of his unsuccessful effort to reauthorize the Superfund law last year, Sher proposed a new fee on machine oil and $10 million a year from the state’s general fund to help finance the cleanup of the abandoned sites. The bill was opposed by business organizations and defeated.