From: | CPEO Moderator <cpeo@cpeo.org> |
Date: | 25 Feb 2002 17:28:03 -0000 |
Reply: | cpeo-brownfields |
Subject: | [CPEO-BIF] President shifting Superfund costs to public |
President shifting Superfund costs to public He won't tax industry to rescue cleanup program Katharine Q. Seelye, New York Times Sunday, February 24, 2002 Washington -- Faced with dwindling reserves in the huge account that gave the Superfund waste-cleanup program its name, the Bush administration has decided to target fewer sites for restoration and to shift the bulk of the costs from industry to taxpayers. The administration says it is dealing with much bigger and more complex sites, if fewer of them, and that deciding how to pay for the program is up to Congress. For years, Congress has failed to reach agreement on reauthorizing the tax on industry that used to be the source of money for the Superfund, which was founded in 1980 under the slogan, "the polluter pays." The trust fund used the special corporate taxes to clean up contamination at so-called orphan sites, or those where the responsible party could not be identified or could not pay, as well as for recalcitrant companies and emergency action. The trust fund has been used to clean up about 30 percent of the 1,551 sites on the Environmental Protection Agency's national priority list, with corporations themselves paying to clean up the other 70 percent. Most companies prefer to pay for their own cleanup because they can do it for less than the government, which is allowed to charge the companies three times the cost, plus penalties. But the trust fund is running out of money. The complete article can be viewed at: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2002/02/24/MN160386.DTL | |
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