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Superfund or Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act of 1980 (CERCLA) is a United States federal law designed to clean up sites contaminated with hazardous substances as well as broadly defined "pollutants or contaminants".[1] Superfund also gives authority to federal natural resource agencies, states and Native American tribes to recover natural resource damages caused by releases of hazardous substances, and it created the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR). CERCLA's broad authority to clean up releases or threatened releases of hazardous substances that may endanger public health or welfare or the (natural) environment was given primarily to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and to states (though most states now have and most often use their own versions of CERCLA). EPA may identify parties responsible for hazardous substances releases to the environment and compel those parties to clean up the sites, or it may clean up itself using the Superfund (a trust fund) and cost recovered from responsible parties by referring such matters to the U.S. Department of Justice. The key difference between the authority to address hazardous substances and pollutants or contaminants is that the cleanup of pollutants or contaminants which are not hazardous substances cannot be compelled by unilateral administrative order.
CERCLA was enacted by Congress in 1980 in response to the threat of hazardous waste sites, typified by the Love Canal disaster in New York, and the Valley of the Drums in Kentucky.[2]
The EPA published the first Hazard Ranking System (HRS) in 1981, and the first National Priorities List (NPL) in 1982.[3] The implementation during early years has been criticized as being ineffective due to the Reagan administration's laissez-faire policies. During his two terms, 16 of the 799 Superfund sites were cleaned up, and $40 million of $700 million in recoverable funds from responsible parties were collected.[4]
The Superfund Amendments and Reauthorization Act of 1986 (SARA), made several important changes and additions to CERCLA, most significantly including Section 121 which added important minimum cleanup requirements, and 122 which required that most agreements with responsible parties to perform remedial action be entered in federal court as a consent decree subject to public comment to address Congressional findings of "sweetheart deals" with industry by the Reagan-era EPA.[5]
In 1994, the Clinton administration proposed a new Superfund reform bill, which was seen as an improvement to existing legislation by some environmentalists and industry lobbyists. However, the effort was unable to gain bipartisan support, and was followed by numerous unsuccessful efforts by the newly elected Republican Congress to significantly weaken the law. This led the Clinton Administration to adopt some industry favored reforms as policy while effectively blocking most major changes.[6] Until the mid-1990s, most of the funding came from a tax on the petroleum and chemical industries, reflecting the polluter pays principle.
CERCLA authorizes two kinds of response actions:
A potentially responsible party (PRP) is a possible polluter who may eventually be held liable under CERCLA for the contamination or misuse of a particular property or resource. Four classes of PRPs may be liable for contamination at a Superfund site:
The CERCLA also required the revision of the National Oil and Hazardous Substances Pollution Contingency Plan 9605(a)(NCP).[13] The NCP provides guidelines and procedures for responses to releases and threatened releases of hazardous substances, pollutants, or contaminants. The NCP also established the NPL. The NPL, which appears as Appendix B to the NCP, primarily serves as an information and management tool for the EPA. The NPL is updated periodically by federal rulemaking.
The identification of a site for the NPL is intended primarily to guide EPA in:
Inclusion of a site on the NPL does not itself require PRPs to initiate action to clean up the site, nor does it assign liability to any person. The NPL serves primarily informational purposes, notifying the government and the public of those sites or releases that appear to warrant remedial actions.
Despite the name, the Superfund trust fund lacks sufficient funds to clean up even a small number of the sites on the NPL. As a result, EPA will typically negotiate consent orders with PRPs to study sites and develop cleanup alternatives, subject to EPA oversight and approval of all such activities. EPA then issues a Proposed Plans for remedial action for a site on which it takes public comment, after which it makes a cleanup decision in a Record of Decision (ROD). RODs are typically implemented under consent decrees by PRPs or under unilateral orders if consent cannot be reached.[14] If a party fails to comply with such an order, it may be fined up to $37,500 for each day that non-compliance continues. A party that spends money to clean up a site may sue other PRPs in a contribution action under the CERCLA.[15] CERCLA liability has generally been judicially established as joint and several among PRPs to the government for cleanup costs (i.e., each PRP is hypothetically responsible for all costs subject to contribution), but CERCLA liability is allocable among PRPs in contribution based on comparative fault. An "orphan share" is the share of costs at a Superfund site that is attributable to a PRP that is either unidentifiable or insolvent.[16] EPA as a matter of long-standing policy tries to treat all PRPs equitably (fairly). Budgetary cuts and constraints can make more equitable treatment of PRPs more difficult.
Upon notification of a potentially hazardous waste site, the EPA conducts a Preliminary Assessment/Site Inspection (PA/SI) which involves records reviews, interviews, visual inspections, and limited field sampling.[17] Information from the PA/SI is used by the EPA to develop a Hazard Ranking System (HRS) score to determine the CERCLA status of the site.[18] Sites that score high enough to be listed typically proceed to a Remedial Investigation/Feasibility Study (RI/FS). The RI includes an extensive sampling program and risk assessment in order to define the nature and extent of the site contamination and risks. The FS is used to develop and evaluate various remediation alternatives. The preferred alternative is presented in a Proposed Plan for public review and comment, followed by a selected alternative in a ROD. The site then enters into a Remedial Design phase and then the Remedial Action phase. Many sites include Long-Term Monitoring. 5-year reviews once the Remedial Action has been completed are required whenever hazardous substances are left onsite above levels safe for unrestricted use.
As of 29 November 2010, there are 1,280 sites listed on the National Priority List; an additional 347 have been delisted, and 62 new sites have been proposed.[22]
Approximately 70 percent of Superfund cleanup activities historically have been paid for by parties responsible (PRPs) for the cleanup of contamination. The only time cleanup costs are not borne by the responsible party is when that party either cannot be found or is unable to pay for the cleanup. For those sites, the Superfund law originally paid for toxic waste cleanups through a tax on petroleum and chemical industries. The chemical and petroleum fees were intended to provide incentives to use less toxic substances. Over five years, $1.6 billion was collected, and the tax went to a trust fund for cleaning up abandoned or uncontrolled hazardous waste sites. The last full fiscal year (FY) in which the Department of the Treasury collected the tax was 1995. At the end of FY 1996 the invested trust fund balance was $6.0 billion. This fund was exhausted by the end of FY 2003; since that time funding for superfund sites for which the potentially responsible party (PRP) could not be found has been appropriated by Congress out of general revenues.[23]
The Hazard Ranking System (HRS) is a scoring system used to evaluate potential relative risks to public health and the environment from releases or threatened releases of hazardous wastes at uncontrolled waste sites. Under the Superfund program, EPA and state agencies use the HRS to calculate a site score (ranging from 0 to 100) based on the actual or potential release of hazardous substances from a site through air, surface water or groundwater. A score of 28.5 places the site on the National Priorities List, making the site eligible for long-term remedial action (i.e., cleanup) under the Superfund program.[24]
The data in the Superfund Program are available to the public.
Library of Congress, Thomas, United States Congress, Government Accountability Office, Public policy
Chemical industry, Mining, Emissions trading, Analytical chemistry, Uranium
Public health, Quarantine, Disaster Relief Act of 1974, United States Department of Health and Human Services, United States Department of Housing and Urban Development
Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Paterson, New Jersey, Bergen County, New Jersey, Camden, New Jersey
Washington, D.C., North Carolina, National Environmental Policy Act, United States Department of the Interior, United States Department of Agriculture
Manhattan Project, Epa, Superfund, Missouri, Barium sulfate
New York City, New York City Subway, Brooklyn, World War I, Superfund
Superfund, Niagara Falls, New York, New York, Cancer, New Jersey
Ronald Reagan, 99th United States Congress, Superfund, United States Environmental Protection Agency, Occupational Safety and Health Administration
Recycling, Waste, Radioactive waste, Public transport, Wastewater