Poisoning the Superfund

Superfund, the 20-year-old federal program to clean up toxic waste sites, was founded on a principle that resonates with every parent: The company that caused the pollution should clean it up. At most abandoned factories and mines nationwide, that’s what happens; corporations pay to make the land safe again for use as parks, schools or homes. If the Bush administration abandons that policy, as it says it will, the prospect for cleaning up a third of federal Superfund sites will become quite remote.

The Superfund issue only adds to President Bush’s alarming environmental record. In just over a year, the president has rolled back scores of federal rules, significantly slowing progress in cleaning up the nation’s air and water and in protecting pristine federal lands. A top enforcement official at the EPA resigned last week, venting frustration with cutbacks, slowdowns, loopholes and lax enforcement.

In practice, of course, Superfund has always been more complicated than the program’s slogan, “The polluter pays.” At some sites many firms had a hand in generating waste, making determination of each party’s share of the cleanup difficult. Polluters of other sites may no longer be in business. That’s why Congress created a trust fund as part of Superfund. Special taxes levied on chemical and oil companies, among other businesses, made up the lion’s share of this fund, which pays to clean up these so-called orphan sites.

Not surprisingly, business never liked this tax, and when it expired in 1995 Congress blocked its reauthorization. Some general tax revenue has gone into this trust fund; now, without new corporate tax revenue, ordinary taxpayers are paying for half the cost of cleanup. Even so, the trust fund is likely to shrink to $28 million next year--a pittance compared with the billions needed.

Now, Bush has decided not to even ask Congress to revive the corporate trust fund tax, declaring instead that he will shift Superfund trust fund costs entirely to individual taxpayers, who of course had no hand in creating the pollution.

The lack of money is already forcing officials at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to dramatically cut back the number of sites they can clean up. As fund revenues dwindle in future years, more cutbacks are certain and the already large backlog of sites will swell.

Since Superfund began, 1,551 sites have been put on the national priority list. Cleanup has been completed at 257 sites, and at 552 most of the work is finished. Yet nearly 500 new sites could be added over the next decade, according to a congressional study. Without funds no work will be done on them.

The Bush administration complains, as industry does, that the Superfund program is poorly managed. The answer, however, is to solve administrative problems, not starve the program and ignore growing toxic waste problems.

The president’s Superfund directive hands his powerful corporate campaign contributors another gift, on top of the administration’s failure to press lawsuits and its delay in enforcement actions: the possibility that, like spoiled children, they will be able to simply walk away from the messes they’ve made.