Lott’s Secret Deal Imperils Superfund Law

Unbeknownst to most of his colleagues, Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott last year made a secret promise in writing to kill changes this year to the Superfund hazardous waste cleanup law, one of the major environmental issues before Congress.

Lott made the deal in order to win passage of a special provision to exempt scrap metal dealers from having to comply with the Superfund law, which requires companies to clean up their polluted sites. The Congressional Budget Office estimates the provision will be worth as much as $700 million to the scrap metal industry over the next decade.

The majority leader’s promise has imperiled one of the few environmental initiatives with bipartisan support in the Senate, a measure to amend the Superfund law to ease potential liabilities for developers who buy abandoned factory sites and urban junkyards. Democrats and Republicans alike favor such “brownfields” legislation because it could limit lawsuits while speeding the redevelopment of blighted industrial areas.

But under the written agreement he reached with his GOP colleague, Sen. Michael D. Crapo of Idaho, Lott pledged that in exchange for Crapo’s allowing the scrap metal exemption to pass, Lott would kill other revisions in the Superfund law, including the brownfields bill, unless they were part of a complete overhaul. Such an overhaul is not on the horizon.

The Lott-Crapo deal offers an unusual glimpse into the kind of congressional backroom dealing and horse-trading that occurs on a regular basis but is rarely captured on paper.

“Deals go on all the time, but it seems unusual to put such a thing in writing,” said political scientist John Pitney.