[CPEO-BIF] Siegel Superfund Testimony

[Lenny Siegel <lennysiegel@gmail.com>]

REPLENISHING THE SUPERFUND WOULD BE A GIANT STEP FORWARD IN PROTECTING 
AMERICAN PUBLIC HEALTH AND THE ENVIRONMENT


Testimony by Lenny Siegel
Executive Director
Center for Public Environmental Oversight

before the
Subcommittee on Superfund and Environmental Health Senate Committee on 
the Environment and Public Health
October 17, 2007

For the full 11-page, 7.2 MB PDF version of the testimony, see 
http://www.cpeo.org/pubs/Superfundtestimony.pdf

Executive Summary

Over the past quarter century, the Comprehensive Environmental Response, 
Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA), commonly known as Superfund, 
has been an important instrument for protecting public health and the 
environment in the United States. Its tools - addressing response, 
compensation, and liability - are like the proverbial three-legged 
stool. At many sites, CERCLA collapses when one of those tools is 
missing. Across the country, since the Superfund account was depleted, 
seriously contaminated sites have suffered from inadequate cleanup, 
inefficiencies, and inequities.

I highlight four sites, all of which I have visited within the past 
year, to illustrate what the shortage of Fund money means to the people 
who live, work, or attend school on or near the some of the nation's 
most contaminated properties.

*  At the Orion Park Military Housing Area, Mountain View, California, 
the shortage of Fund resources has severely handicapped U.S. EPA's 
ability to address off-site sources, preventing it from requiring the 
Navy to conduct on-site cleanup and forcing NASA to expend its own 
resources on contamination from the site. Contamination prevented the 
development of new military housing on the site, and military personnel 
at the planned Armed Forces Reserve training complex will be at 
long-term risk from vapor intrusion, the migration of subsurface 
contamination into buildings.

*  In Victor, New York trichloroethylene (TCE) from apparent illegal 
dumping has poisoned private wells and released toxic vapors into homes. 
A Fund-led cleanup could protect the impacted families, but the 
Superfund does not have enough money for it to make much sense even to 
add the site to the National Priorities List (NPL).

*  In Ambler, Pennsylvania, EPA successfully capped two asbestos waste 
pile sites 14 years ago, but remaining piles, not on the NPL, are slated 
for redevelopment. Neighbors, fearing that current exposures will be 
increased with the release of development-associated asbestos dust, 
would like EPA to list the site and fund the response, but as long as 
the Fund is depleted, this appears unlikely.

*  There is consensus support for the dredging of polychlorinated 
biphenyls (PCBs) from New Bedford Harbor, Massachusetts, a Superfund 
"mega-site." However, inadequate funding has forced an inefficient 
start-and-stop cleanup that is currently slated to stretch out a quarter 
century.

Today, both at sites already dependent upon EPA funding and those that 
should be added to the National Priorities List, cleanup is slow and 
inefficient, and expenses are often borne by third parties. Replenishing 
the fund would be a giant step forward in recognizing, investigating, 
and remediating the most contaminated sites in America.




--


Lenny Siegel
Executive Director, Center for Public Environmental Oversight
a project of the Pacific Studies Center
278-A Hope St., Mountain View, CA 94041
Voice: 650/961-8918 or 650/969-1545
Fax: 650/961-8918
<lsiegel@cpeo.org>
http://www.cpeo.org



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