Superfund

Superfund is the popular name for the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA). CERCLA, passed by Congress in 1980, was aimed at cleaning up the nation's hazardous waste sites. The timing of the legislation was largely in response to media coverage about the troubles of citizens of New York dealing with hazardous waste cleanup at a site known as the Love Canal. As part of CERCLA, Congress created a special fund to cover the cost of hazardous waste cleanup known as the Superfund.

In 1978, residents of the United States became aware of the struggle of residents in the area of Niagara, New York, living close to and on top of a hazardous waste dumpsite. Residents maintained that they were being exposed to dangerous chemicals that caused cancer, miscarriages, and birth defects. The New York Health Commissioner ordered a cleanup of the area. The commissioner did not want to declare the area as uninhabitable, which angered citizens, as they demanded to be relocated. Part of the dispute had to do with who should pay to relocate families and to clean up the area. Although the city owned much of the land, it had previously been owned by a private chemical company. Moreover, city, state, and local governments could not agree on who should be responsible for the cleanup [Page 481]costs. The New York Times eventually picked up the story, which gave it national attention. Eventually, all of the residents were relocated, and the state government borrowed the money from the federal government for relocation and cleanup.

This Quanta Resources superfund site is located in Edgewater, New Jersey

Source: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

The Love Canal case brought the issue of toxic waste sites to the foreground of the U.S. policy-making agenda. The site in New York was only one of thousands of potential hazardous waste sites across the nation. Congress quickly realized that, due to the high cost of cleanup, many citizens could be exposed to hazardous wastes. Congress passed CERCLA to address the cost of cleanup. Superfund was financed by a tax charged to chemical and petroleum companies. CERCLA also increased federal government authority to respond directly to the need for cleanup of hazardous waste sites that endangered public health or the environment. Over the first five years, $1.6 billion was collected and put into the Superfund for cleaning up abandoned hazardous waste sites.

The money allocated to the Superfund was only to be drawn on in cases in which the polluter could not be directly indentified. A provision of CERCLA encompassed the “polluters pay” principle, which required companies responsible for hazardous waste pollution to pay for its cleanup. One of the most controversial aspects of the CERCLA was that polluters were responsible to pay for cleanup even if they no longer owned the site. CERCLA also created rules and requirements for closed or abandoned hazardous waste sites.

In order for a site to become eligible for Superfund money, it was required to go through a verification process called the Hazardous Ranking System (HRS). The HRS is a method to score individual sites based on their danger to the surrounding community. It uses a method of assigning numerical values to various factors that are related to specific conditions at a given site. The factors are grouped into categories including the likelihood that a site had released hazardous waste or toxins into the environment, the specific characteristics of the waste, and the proximity of people or easily upset ecosystems. There are four different paths for this waste to be scored in relation to how the toxins may be spread and these include groundwater, surface water, and air migrations, as well as exposure to soil.

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