Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
The American public was deeply concerned by such data, and in 1980
Congress passed what has become known as the Superfund law. Accord-
ing to the legislation, polluting industries were to pay the bulk of the
cost of cleaning up the nation's toxic waste dumps. But in 1995, their
lobbying groups succeeded in having their payment responsibility
repealed, removing hundreds of millions of dollars annually from cleanup
use. Since 1995, the Superfund program has been chronically under-
fi nanced. Today it cleans up hazardous waste sites with money that
comes directly from polluters and money appropriated by Congress.
Appropriations are necessary because it is not possible to identify the
polluter at many sites. And at other sites, the polluter cannot be located
or is no longer in business. The stimulus bill that was passed in 2009
provides $600 million for Superfund work, nearly doubling the amount
available in 2008.
Since the Superfund Law was enacted, Congress has appropriated an
average of $1.2 billion per year for its implementation, and states have
also contributed billions. Nevertheless, as of mid-2007, twenty-seven
years after the Superfund law was passed, 80 percent of the hazardous
waste sites in the EPA's Superfund program remain contaminated, and
nearly half of the population lives within 10 miles of one of the 1,600
sites on the National Priorities List (NPR). 19 New Jersey leads the NPR
list with 116 sites—one for each 65 square miles. California and Penn-
sylvania are tied for second place with 96 each.
It is nearly impossible to determine the number of hazardous sites that
have been cleaned up because the EPA in 1990 changed its defi nition of
success to one that does not indicate remediation. According to the revised
defi nition, construction completeness, not remediation, is the standard.
The EPA is apparently at peace when any necessary physical construction
at a site is complete (for example, pumps are in place to remediate ground-
water), even if fi nal cleanup levels or other requirements for the site have
not been met. It can be years before cleanup goals are achieved at some
sites. Between 1992 and 2000, EPA's “construction-complete” sites ranged
between sixty-one and eighty-eight, but the number of construction-
complete sites has dropped into the forties since then. 20 One suspects that
hazardous waste sites will persist throughout this century.
According to the EPA, as many as 350,000 contaminated sites will
require cleanup over the next thirty years, assuming that current regula-
tions and practices remain the same. The national bill for this cleanup
may amount to $250 billion. 21 Humans are the only creatures in nature
that deliberately poison their nest. It is truly amazing what a highly
evolved brain can accomplish in a short time.
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