Superfund is the common name for the
Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act of 1980 (CERCLA), a
United StatesThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
federal law designed to clean up sites contaminated with hazardous substances. Superfund created the
Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease RegistryThe Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry is a federal public health agency within the United States Department of Health and Human Services. The agency focuses on minimizing human health risks associated with exposure to hazardous substances...
(ATSDR), and it provides broad
federalThe federal government of the United States is the national government of the constitutional republic of fifty states that is the United States of America. The federal government comprises three distinct branches of government: a legislative, an executive and a judiciary. These branches and...
authority to clean up releases or threatened releases of hazardous substances that may endanger
public healthPublic health is "the science and art of preventing disease, prolonging life and promoting health through the organized efforts and informed choices of society, organizations, public and private, communities and individuals" . It is concerned with threats to health based on population health...
or the
environmentThe natural environment encompasses all living and non-living things occurring naturally on Earth or some region thereof. It is an environment that encompasses the interaction of all living species....
. The law authorized the
Environmental Protection AgencyThe U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is an agency of the federal government of the United States charged with protecting human health and the environment, by writing and enforcing regulations based on laws passed by Congress...
(EPA) to identify parties responsible for contamination of sites and compel the parties to clean up the sites. Where responsible parties cannot be found, the Agency is authorized to clean up sites itself, using a special trust fund.
History
CERCLA was enacted by
CongressThe United States Congress is the bicameral legislature of the federal government of the United States, consisting of the Senate and the House of Representatives. The Congress meets in the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C....
in 1980 in response to the threat of hazardous waste sites, typified by the
Love CanalLove Canal was a neighborhood in Niagara Falls, New York, located in the white collar LaSalle section of the city. It officially covers 36 square blocks in the far southeastern corner of the city, along 99th Street and Read Avenue...
disaster in
New YorkNew York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
, and the
Valley of the DrumsThe Valley of the Drums is a 23 acre toxic waste site in northern Bullitt County, Kentucky, near Louisville, named after the waste-containing drums strewn across the area. It is known as one of the primary motivations for the passage of the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and...
in
KentuckyThe Commonwealth of Kentucky is a state located in the East Central United States of America. As classified by the United States Census Bureau, Kentucky is a Southern state, more specifically in the East South Central region. Kentucky is one of four U.S. states constituted as a commonwealth...
.
The EPA published the first
Hazard Ranking SystemThe Hazard Ranking System is a scoring system used in the United States to evaluate potential relative risks to public health and the environment from releases or threatened releases of hazardous wastes at uncontrolled waste sites...
(HRS) in 1981, and the first
National Priorities ListThe National Priorities List is the list of hazardous waste sites in the United States eligible for long-term remedial action financed under the federal Superfund program. Environmental Protection Agency regulations outline a formal process for assessing hazardous waste sites and placing them on...
(NPL) in 1982. 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.
The Superfund Amendments and Reauthorization Act of 1986 (SARA), made several important changes and additions to CERCLA including increasing the funding of Superfund to $8.5 billion and providing for studies and the use of new technologies.
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. Until the mid-1990s, most of the funding came from a tax on the petroleum and chemical industries, reflecting the
polluter pays principleIn environmental law, the polluter pays principle is enacted to make the party responsible for producing pollution responsible for paying for the damage done to the natural environment. It is regarded as a regional custom because of the strong support it has received in most Organisation for...
, and Congress yielded to corporate pressure.
Provisions
CERCLA authorizes two kinds of response actions:
- Removal actions. These are typically short-term response actions, where actions may be taken to address releases or threatened releases requiring prompt response. Removal actions are classified as: (1) emergency; (2) time-critical; and (3) non-time critical. Removal responses are generally used to address localized risks such as abandoned drums containing hazardous substances, and contaminated surface soils posing acute risks to human health or the environment.
- Remedial actions. These are usually long-term response actions. Remedial actions seek to permanently and significantly reduce the risks associated with releases or threats of releases of hazardous substances which are serious, but lack the time-criticality of removal actions, and include such measures as preventing the migration of pollutants and neutralizing toxic substances. These actions can be conducted only at sites listed on the EPA National Priorities List
The National Priorities List is the list of hazardous waste sites in the United States eligible for long-term remedial action financed under the federal Superfund program. Environmental Protection Agency regulations outline a formal process for assessing hazardous waste sites and placing them on...
(NPL) in the United States and the territories.
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potentially responsible party (PRP) is a possible polluter who may eventually be held
liableLegal liability is the legal bound obligation to pay debts.* In law a person is said to be legally liable when they are financially and legally responsible for something. Legal liability concerns both civil law and criminal law. See Strict liability. Under English law, with the passing of the Theft...
under CERCLA for the contamination or misuse of a particular property or
resourceNatural resources occur naturally within environments that exist relatively undisturbed by mankind, in a natural form. A natural resource is often characterized by amounts of biodiversity and geodiversity existent in various ecosystems....
. Four classes of PRPs may be liable for contamination at a Superfund site:
- the current owner or operator of the site;
- the owner or operator of a site at the time that disposal of a hazardous substance, pollutant or contaminant occurred;
- a person who arranged for the disposal of a hazardous substance, pollutant or contaminant at a site; and
- a person who transported a hazardous substance, pollutant or contaminant to a site, who also has selected that site for the disposal of the hazardous substances, pollutants or contaminants.
The CERCLA also enabled the revision of the
National Oil and Hazardous Substances Pollution Contingency PlanThe National Oil and Hazardous Substances Pollution Contingency Plan, more commonly called the National Contingency Plan or NCP, is the United States federal government's blueprint for responding to oil spills and hazardous substance releases...
(NCP). The NCP provided the guidelines and procedures needed to respond 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, and helps the EPA prioritize sites for cleanup. The NPL is updated periodically.
The identification of a site for the NPL is intended primarily to guide EPA in:
- determining which sites warrant further investigation to assess the nature and extent of the risks to the human health and environment;
- identifying what CERCLA-financed remedial actions may be appropriate;
- notifying the public of sites which EPA believes warrant further investigation; and
- notifying PRPs that EPA may initiate CERCLA-financed remedial action.
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, the government will typically order PRPs to clean up the site themselves. If a party fails to comply with such an order, it may be fined up to $25,000 for each day that non-compliance continues. A party that spends money to clean up a site may sue certain other PRPs under the CERCLA. A related provision allows a party that has reimbursed another party's response costs to seek contribution from other PRPs, during or after the original lawsuit. An "orphan share" is the share of waste at a Superfund site that cannot be collected because the PRP is either unidentifiable or insolvent.
Procedures
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. 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. Sites that score high enough to qualify for the full program then proceed to a Remedial Investigation/Feasibility Study (RI/FS). The RI includes an extensive sampling program and risk assessment in order to define the 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. The selected alternative is approved in a Record of Decision (ROD). The site then enters into a Remedial Design phase and then the Remedial Action phase. Many sites include Long-Term Monitoring and 5-year reviews once the Remedial Action has been completed.
The
CERCLA information system (CERCLIS) is a database maintained by the EPA and the states that lists sites where releases may have occurred, need to be addressed, or have been addressed. CERCLIS consists of three inventories: the CERCLIS Removal Inventory, the CERCLIS Remedial Inventory, and the CERCLIS Enforcement Inventory.
The
Superfund Innovative Technology Evaluation (SITE) program supports development of technologies for assessing and treating waste at Superfund sites. The EPA evaluates the technology and provides an assessment of its potential for future use in Superfund remediation actions. The SITE program consists of four related components: the Demonstration Program, the Emerging Technologies Program, the Monitoring and Measurement Technologies Program, and Technology Transfer activities.
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reportable quantity (RQ) is the minimum quantity of a hazardous substance which, if released, is required to be reported.
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source control action represents the construction or installation and start-up of those actions necessary to prevent the continued release of hazardous substances (primarily from a source on top of or within the ground, or in buildings or other structures) into the environment .
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section 104(e) letter is the EPA's formal notice letter to potentially responsible parties that CERCLA-related action is to be undertaken at a site with those PRPs being considered responsible. The legal authority for the letter comes from CERCLA 104(e), codified at (e). This section of law authorizes the EPA to enter facilities and obtain information relating to PRPs, hazardous substances releases, and liability. The section 104(e) letter is the main-information-gathering tool under this section of the law. The letter is essentially a questionnaire which resembles the
interrogatoriesIn law, interrogatories are a formal set of written questions propounded by one litigant and required to be answered by an adversary, in order to clarify matters of fact and help to determine in advance what facts will be presented at any trial in the case.In civil cases, the issues to be decided...
of civil litigation. It has been called an effective enforcement mechanism "because the respondent is prevented from testing the validity of the device until the government tries to enforce. Meanwhile, penalties for noncompliance can keep mounting."
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section 106 order is a unilateral administrative order that allows the EPA to order a potentially responsible party to perform certain remedial actions at a Superfund site, subject to
treble damagesTreble damages, in law, is a term that indicates that a statute permits a court to triple the amount of the actual/compensatory damages to be awarded to a prevailing plaintiff, generally in order to punish the losing party for willful conduct. Treble damages are a multiple of, and not an addition...
and daily fines if the order is not obeyed.
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remedial response is a long-term action that stops or substantially reduces a release of a hazardous substance that could affect public health or the environment. The term remediation, or cleanup, is sometimes used interchangeably with the terms remedial action, removal action, response action, remedy, or corrective action.
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remedial action plan is a plan that details the technical approach for implementing the remedial response. It includes the methods to be followed during the entire remediation process—from developing the remedial design to implementing the selected remedy through construction.
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nonbinding allocation of responsibility (NBAR) is a device, established in the Superfund Amendments and Reauthorization Act, that allows the EPA to make a nonbinding estimate of the proportional share that each of the various responsible parties at a Superfund site should pay toward the costs of cleanup.
Relevant and appropriate requirements are those United States federal or state cleanup requirements that, while not "applicable," address problems sufficiently similar to those encountered at the CERCLA site that their use is appropriate. Requirements may be relevant and appropriate if they would be "applicable" except for jurisdictional restrictions associated with the requirement .
Implementation
As of November 29, 2010, there are currently 1,280 sites listed on the National Priority List, an additional 347 have been delisted, and 62 new sites have been proposed.
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
taxTo tax is to impose a financial charge or other levy upon a taxpayer by a state or the functional equivalent of a state such that failure to pay is punishable by law. Taxes are also imposed by many subnational entities...
on
petroleumPetroleum or crude oil is a naturally occurring, flammable liquid consisting of a complex mixture of hydrocarbons of various molecular weights and other liquid organic compounds, that are found in geologic formations beneath the Earth's surface. Petroleum is recovered mostly through oil drilling...
and
chemical industriesThe chemical industry comprises the companies that produce industrial chemicals. Central to the modern world economy, it converts raw materials into more than 70,000 different products.-Products:...
. 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 in which the
Department of the TreasuryThe Department of the Treasury is an executive department and the treasury of the United States federal government. It was established by an Act of Congress in 1789 to manage government revenue...
collected the tax was FY1995. At the end of FY1996, the invested trust fund balance was $6.0 billion. This fund was exhausted by the end of FY2003; since that time funding for these orphan shares has been
appropriated by CongressThe United States Senate Committee on Appropriations is a standing committee of the United States Senate. It has jurisdiction over all discretionary spending legislation in the Senate....
out of general revenues.
Accessing Superfund data
The data in the Superfund Program is available to the public.
- EPA Superfund Information Systems: Report and Product Descriptions
- EPA Superfund Information Systems: Superfund Product Order Form
- TOXMAP
TOXMAP is a geographic information system from the United States National Library of Medicine that uses maps of the United States to help users visually explore data from the United States Environmental Protection Agency's Toxics Release Inventory and Superfund programs...
is a Geographic Information System (GIS) from the Division of Specialized Information Services of the United States National Library of MedicineThe United States National Library of Medicine , operated by the United States federal government, is the world's largest medical library. Located in Bethesda, Maryland, the NLM is a division of the National Institutes of Health...
(NLM) that uses maps of the United States to help users visually explore data from the United States Environmental Protection AgencyThe U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is an agency of the federal government of the United States charged with protecting human health and the environment, by writing and enforcing regulations based on laws passed by Congress...
's (EPA) Toxics Release InventoryThe Toxics Release Inventory is a publicly available database containing information on toxic chemical releases and other waste management activities in the United States.-Summary of requirements:...
and Superfund http://www.epa.gov/superfund programs. TOXMAP is a resource funded by the US Federal Government. TOXMAP's chemical and environmental health information is taken from NLM's Toxicology Data Network (TOXNET)
- Locus Technologies
Locus Technologies is an American corporation with headquarters in Mountain View, California, , that provides services to organize energy, water, and environmental data and information via the Internet worldwide.-Profile:...
on its web site provides free Geographic Information System (GIS) to locate Superfund and other contaminated sites in the United States that uses Google MapsGoogle Maps is a web mapping service application and technology provided by Google, free , that powers many map-based services, including the Google Maps website, Google Ride Finder, Google Transit, and maps embedded on third-party websites via the Google Maps API...
to help users visually explore data from the United States Environmental Protection AgencyThe U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is an agency of the federal government of the United States charged with protecting human health and the environment, by writing and enforcing regulations based on laws passed by Congress...
's (EPA) Toxics Release InventoryThe Toxics Release Inventory is a publicly available database containing information on toxic chemical releases and other waste management activities in the United States.-Summary of requirements:...
, RCRA, and Superfund http://www.epa.gov/superfund programs.
and
PubMedPubMed is a free database accessing primarily the MEDLINE database of references and abstracts on life sciences and biomedical topics. The United States National Library of Medicine at the National Institutes of Health maintains the database as part of the Entrez information retrieval system...
, and from other authoritative sources.
See also
- List of Superfund sites in the United States
- Brownfield land
Brownfield sites are abandoned or underused industrial and commercial facilities available for re-use. Expansion or redevelopment of such a facility may be complicated by real or perceived environmental contaminations. Cf. Waste...
- Brownfield Regulation and Development
The United States Environmental Protection Agency defines brownfield land as property where the reuse may be complicated by the presence of hazardous materials....
- Formerly Used Defense Sites
Formerly Used Defense Sites is a U.S. military program which is responsible for environmental restoration of all properties that were owned by, leased to, or otherwise possessed by the United States and under the jurisdiction of the Secretary of Defense. There are over 9,800 sites in the United...
- Gade v. National Solid Wastes Management Association
In Gade v. National Solid Wastes Management Association, 505 U.S. 88 , the United States Supreme Court determined that federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration regulations preempted various Illinois provisions for licensing workers who handled hazardous waste...
- Hazardous waste
A hazardous waste is waste that poses substantial or potential threats to public health or the environment. According to the U.S. environmental laws hazardous wastes fall into two major categories: characteristic wastes and listed wastes.Characteristic hazardous wastes are materials that are known...
- Toxic waste
Toxic waste is waste material that can cause death or injury to living creatures. It spreads quite easily and can contaminate lakes and rivers. The term is often used interchangeably with “hazardous waste”, or discarded material that can pose a long-term risk to health or environment.Toxic waste...
- National Oil and Hazardous Substances Contingency Plan
- Phase I Environmental Site Assessment
In the United States, an environmental site assessment is a report prepared for a real estate holding which identifies potential or existing environmental contamination liabilities. The analysis, often called an ESA, typically addresses both the underlying land as well as physical improvements to...
- Resource Conservation and Recovery Act
The Resource Conservation and Recovery Act , enacted in 1976, is the principal Federal law in the United States governing the disposal of solid waste and hazardous waste.-History and Goals:...
(RCRA)
- Superfund Research Program
- TOXMAP
TOXMAP is a geographic information system from the United States National Library of Medicine that uses maps of the United States to help users visually explore data from the United States Environmental Protection Agency's Toxics Release Inventory and Superfund programs...
- United States v. Bestfoods
United States v. Bestfoods, No. 97-454 , was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that the indirect liability of a parent corporation under CERCLA is to be determined by its control over a subsidiary's facility, rather than the relationship between the corporation and...
- Vapor intrusion
Vapor intrusion is a process by which chemicals in soil or groundwater migrate to above a contaminated site. is an , the United States Environmental Protection Agency having only issued a draft guidance on the subject in 2002...
External links