Senate Subcommittee Holds Hearing on Superfund Program

The Senate Subcommittee on Superfund, Toxics and Environmental Health held a hearing June 17 on the state of the Superfund environmental cleanup program.  The hearing coincided with the release of a General Accounting Office (GAO) report that supports legislation to revive a corporate tax to help pay for restoration of Superfund sites.

“We have to make cleaning up these sites a greater priority,” Subcommittee Chairman Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) said in his opening statement.  He also discussed the impact that environmental contamination has on birth defect and cancer rates, and pointed out that, since a similar tax on corporations expired in 1995, funding for Superfund projects has dropped 20 percent.  Lautenberg is author of the pending tax legislation, known as the “Polluter Pays Restoration Act.”

Ranking Member on the Committee, Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), made clear his view that the responsible parties are paying their share of the cleanup under the current laws, as 70 percent of all Superfund site cleanup is funded by them.

The first panel of witnesses was made up of Mathy Stanislaus, Assistant Administrator for the EPA’s Office of Solid Waste and Emergency Response and John Stephenson, Director of National Resources and Environment at the GAO.  Stanislaus emphasized that immediate action is needed to protect human health and described the decrease in the number of Superfund sites that the EPA has been able to address per year since the corporate tax expired.  Stephenson presented some of the highlights of the new GAO report, including that the number of Superfund sites will likely increase substantially in the next five years.

The second panel of witnesses included activist Lois Gibbs, whose children were greatly harmed when they lived in a contaminated neighborhood that ultimately became one of the first Superfund sites when the program was created in 1980.  As someone who testified on behalf of the program then, she found it “tragic” that she was on the Hill again so many years later to make sure the program remains sufficiently funded.  She spoke at great length about a Dayton, Ohio neighborhood currently so contaminated that the homes there are worthless, schools are being closed, and even sitting in the grass could be harmful for children.

The other witnesses in the second panel were Helene Pierson, Executive Director of Heart of Camden, Dr. J. Winston Porter, President of The Waste Policy Center, and Dr. John Stumbo, mayor of Fort Valley, Georgia.  Both Pierson and Stumbo live in communities where Superfund projects are underway with positive results.  Porter opposes the idea of the proposed tax and expressed his view that most of the cleanup is being done by private parties directly.  Sen. Lautenberg challenged Porter on what influence that would have on the cleanup on “orphan” sites, where the responsible party is either unidentifiable or unable to pay.

 “I ran big companies,” Sen. Lautenberg said at the close of the hearing.  “We’re responsible for everything we do.”

The full GAO report is attached.