Rachel's #905: Remember the super fund?

[Guest guest]

At 08:45 PM 5/3/07, you wrote:

 

>TAKING THE 'FUND' OUT OF SUPERFUND

>

>By Kate Sheppard

>

>A drop-off in both government action and funding has all but stopped

>the push to clean up America's most toxic sites, posing health and

>environmental threats all over the country, according to a

>comprehensive series of reports released last week by the Center for

>Public Integrity.

>

>Under the Bush administration, the amount of money budgeted to clean

>up these sites has plummeted and cleanup has stagnated, while the

>list of sites that need environmental remediation continues to grow.

>

>The detailed report chronicles the government's failure to clean up

>our country's most toxic sites, and includes a leaked list of the

>most contaminated sites, an index of the companies linked to the

>most dangerous sites, and mapping tools that indicate the 1,623

>Superfund sites around the country. It also highlights some of the

>slick tactics, hobnobbing, and back-scratching that helped bring

>Superfund to this point.

>

>It's been 27 years since the federal government launched Superfund, a

>multi-billion dollar project to clean up more than 1,000 toxic sites

>around the country in the wake of the Love Canal saga. In the

>beginning, the program was funded by a tax on polluters that fed into

>a pool of money used to pay for the cleanup of other sites where the

>sources of the pollution were unknown or the polluter couldn't take

>care of the problem.

>

>That tax law expired in 1995 under a Republican-controlled Congress,

>and by 2003 the $3.8 billion that had accumulated in the fund was

>pretty much exhausted. Since then, taxpayer money and cash recovered

>from polluters has powered the program. But the total amount in the

>Superfund budget has not kept up with inflation. According to the

>report, the program received $1.43 billion in appropriations in 1995,

>but 12 years later, it received $1.25 billion. Adjusted for inflation,

>funding has declined by 35 percent.

>

>The EPA inspector general, the Government Accountability Office, and

>Congress have all issued reports on the Superfund collapse, but EPA

>officials in the Bush administration have done little to support the

>program. The top-ranking Superfund official, Susan Bodine, has a

>record of defunding the program she was appointed to head. In 1999,

>she helped author a bill that would have decreased the Superfund

>budget by $300 million (it failed), and just a month after her

>confirmation Bodine supported a $7 million decrease to the cleanup

>budget. She later stood beside the Bush administration's budget

>request for 2008, which reduces the budget by another $7 million.

>

>Collection from companies deemed responsible at specific sites has

>also dropped off significantly. The amount coming in peaked in 1998

>and 1999 at about $320 million each year. In 2004 that amount dropped

>below $100 million, and in 2005 and 2006 the EPA collected just $60

>million each year.

>

>The EPA ranks sites, but usually does not disclose the ranking,

>claiming it doesn't want polluters to know which sites are a priority

>and which aren't. But according to the report, some EPA insiders say

>the secrecy is intended to avoid provoking the public into demanding a

>solution from Congress.

>

> " Basically, the leash has been let off of these corporations and at

>the end of the day, they are paying less money to clean up the sites,

>and taking less action themselves to clean up the sites. And the

>public bears the brunt of that, " said Alex Knott, political editor at

>CPI and project manger on the Superfund report.

>

>The squeeze on funding has forced the remaining sites to compete for

>money left over from previous cleanups. The less worrisome -- albeit

>still toxic -- sites have fallen off the priorities list, leaving

>millions of Americans at risk of exposure through air, soil, and

>groundwater.

>

> " It is like having four sick kids at a table, and you only have one

>aspirin, " Lois Gibbs, the housewife-turned-activist in Love Canal

>known as the " Mother of Superfund, " told CPI. " You can't decide which

>one to give it to even though they all need assistance, and, like a

>Superfund site, those illnesses are going to get worse and those

>medical costs are going to get higher the longer it takes you to

>address the problem. "

>

>The last few years have also seen a slowdown in the number of sites

>added to the list -- down to 17 per year from 25 between 1995 and 2000

>-- and longer cleanup times.

>

> " I want the American public to understand what's really at stake, "

>says Knott. " It's not just about some '60s dream of everybody becoming

>sensible about the environment. It's about health. You know, we're

>living at a time where over the last couple of decades, Americans have

>become more and more conscious about the things that affect their

>health. But they're not aware that one in five of them is living near

>a Superfund site where the contaminants that can affect their water

>and the air they breathe is not under control. "

>

>See the full report at CPI.

 

 

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