IB95013: Superfund Reauthorization Issues in the 105th Congress

Mark Reisch
Environment and Natural Resources Division

Updated January 27, 1997

CONTENTS

SUMMARY
MOST RECENT DEVELOPMENTS
BACKGROUND AND ANALYSIS

A Brief Summary of the Cleanup Program

Relieving the Burden of Retroactive Liability

Cleanup Standards and Remedy Selection -- Concerns Over Expense and Delay

Should Natural Resources Damages Be Narrowed?

Giving States More Control of the Program

Expanding the Brownfields Program

Aiding Voluntary Cleanup Programs for Lower Risk Sites

Action in the 105th Congress

LEGISLATION
CONGRESSIONAL HEARINGS, REPORTS, AND DOCUMENTS
FOR ADDITIONAL READING

SUMMARY

Reauthorizing the Superfund hazardous waste cleanup law is a top environmental priority in the 105th Congress, according to congressional leaders and the subcommittees with jurisdiction. The program has been accused of being slow, ineffective, and too expensive. Many feel its liability system is unfair. And the taxes that feed the Superfund trust fund expired on December 31, 1995.

The law's title is the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act of 1980 (CERCLA, P.L. 96-510). Major revisions were made by the Superfund Amendments and Reauthorization Act of 1986 (SARA, P.L. 99-499).

The Superfund FY1997 appropriation is $1.394 billion. The authority to collect the taxes that support the trust fund ended in 1995; the Congressional Budget Office says there is enough in the trust fund to last through FY2000.

As of December 1996, 16 years after the law's enactment, 412 sites (31%) placed on the Superfund's National Priorities List (NPL) had been removed to the Construction Completed List.

CERCLA's broad liability scheme has been the most difficult reauthorization issue. The average cost of cleanup is about $30 million, a large enough amount to make it worthwhile for parties to pursue legal means to spread the costs rather than to settle. So at large sites, where it is not unusual for there to be over a hundred potentially responsible parties, there can be a commensurate amount of expensive negotiation and litigation. This has been especially burdensome on small businesses and other minor parties.

The law's cleanup standards and reme-dy selection procedures are also controversial. Requirements for treatment, permanence, and the application of both federal and state regulations have led to what some critics characterize as overly strict risk assessment, and increased costs and delay at many sites.

Business interests want to limit the scope of natural resource damages that can be assessed against them by putting a cap on the amount of such awards, and by only recognizing economic losses.

A number of states want to have full delegation of the authorities in CERCLA, including remedy selection, control over CERCLA's monies, and the determination of what sites go on and off the NPL. The popular brownfields program is likely to receive additional assistance, as are state voluntary cleanup programs.

Senate Superfund subcommittee chairman Bob Smith on January 21, 1997, introduced S. 8, a comprehensive reauthorization bill.

The Clinton Administration's position on the need for Superfund reauthorization appears to be in a state of flux. In December, EPA and Justice Department enforcement officials said the program now runs well and few amendments are needed, contrary to earlier statements by the President and Vice President.

MOST RECENT DEVELOPMENTS

The chairman's Superfund reauthorization bill, S. 8, was introduced on January 21, 1997, by Senator Bob Smith, head of the Environment and Public Works Subcommittee on Superfund , Waste Control, and Risk Assessment. Developed from last Congress's S. 1285, a major difference from that bill is in the liability provisions, which exempt all generators and transporters at landfills that received mainly municipal solid waste and sewage sludge prior to January 1, 1997. It also exempts from liability small businesses with fewer than 30 employees or with gross revenues less than $3 million. It doubles the brownfields authorization to $60 million. The subcommittee's ranking minority member, Senator Frank Lautenberg, introduced S. 18, a brownfields bill similar to his proposal in the last Congress.

According to news reports, there is disagreement between the White House and senior Superfund enforcement officials (which includes the Department of Justice, as well as the Environmental Protection Agency) over their strategy for reauthorization. The new White House Chief of Staff, Erskine Bowles, discussed Superfund reform as one of five top legislative priorities with a group of House Republican Members on December 5. But at a meeting on December 17, the enforcement officials were quoted as saying the Superfund program was now "running very well," that few amendments to the law were needed, and that they should wait before offering limited changes. Commerce Committee Chairman Thomas Bliley said in early December that if the Clinton Administration did not send up a proposal, he and Representative John Dingell, the ranking minority member, would develop a bill that would win bipartisan support.

BACKGROUND AND ANALYSIS

The reauthorization of the Superfund program is a top environmental priority of the 105th Congress, according to congressional leaders and the subcommittees with jurisdiction. It is the principal federal program for cleaning up inactive hazardous waste sites, and protecting public health and the environment from releases of hazardous substances. The establishing law's formal title is the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act of 1980 (CERCLA); comprehensive changes were made by the Superfund Amendments and Reauthorization Act of 1986 (SARA). The Superfund trust fund raised about $1.5 billion per year, primarily from excise taxes on petroleum and specified chemical feedstocks, and a corporate environmental income tax, before the taxes expired on December 31, 1995. The law requires responsible parties to pay for cleanups, and the fund is used where a financially viable party cannot be found, and for the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA's) enforcement, management activities, and research and development. For FY1997, Congress appropriated $1.394 billion, the level requested by the Clinton Administration (P.L. 104-204). Recent annual appropriations have been ($ billion): FY1996 -- $1.313; FY1995 -- $1.431; FY1994 -- $1.497; and FY1993 -- $1.602.

The Superfund program has come under heavy criticism over the years. Citizens are dissatisfied with the slow rate of cleanup, 12 years on average. The polluting companies and their insurers complain that they are required to pay for "gold plated cleanups." Further, they say the law's retroactive nature is unfair in reaching back to activities that were legal before enactment. And thousands of small businesses, social organizations, school districts, municipalities, and others have been drawn into Superfund's liability web for disposing of small amounts of waste -- and have regularly paid their attorneys as the Superfund cleanup process dragged on.

Since the taxes that support the fund expired on December 31, 1995, the only amounts now coming into the fund are from fines, penalties, and interest on the fund's investments. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the fund's balance is sufficient to last through FY2000 at current rates of appropriation. Nevertheless, the lack of taxes creates pressure to reauthorize the law, since the Ways and Means chairman, Bill Archer, has said that the taxes will not be restored until there have been fundamental changes in the act, particularly its liability regime.

EPA does not have unfettered access to the Superfund trust fund. Congress annually appropriates monies from the fund to EPA, and in most years adds a contribution from the general fund of the Treasury, usually $250 million, the maximum authorized in CERCLA.

In the last Congress, the House Commerce Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade and Hazardous Materials approved H.R. 2500, but the bill got no further. The Senate Environment and Public Works Subcommittee on Superfund , Waste Control, and Risk Assessment did not finish deliberations on S. 1285. The bills were introduced by their respective subcommittee chairmen, Representative Michael Oxley and Senator Bob Smith. The House Transportation and Infrastructure Subcommittee on Water Resources and Environment (Representative Sherwood Boehlert, chairman) held hearings on reauthorization issues. The Transportation Committee shares jurisdiction, and the Ways and Means Committee has sole jurisdiction over Superfund's taxes.

The committees have not set their agendas, but informal reports indicate that Superfund reform is the first or second priority among the jurisdictional subcommittees. Also, on January 8, Senate majority leader Trent Lott said Superfund was at the top of the environmental schedule, as did House majority leader Richard Armey on January 12. There appears to be general agreement to shift more responsibility to states, to increase public involvement, and to give the brownfields program for cleaning up less dangerous sites formal status in law. But liability, cleanup standards, and natural resource damage assessment issues are more difficult to resolve.

A Brief Summary of the Cleanup Program

The National Contingency Plan (NCP, codified at 40 CFR 300) provides a blueprint of how EPA is to respond to hazardous substance releases. It covers methods for discovering and investigating hazardous waste sites, the roles of federal and state agencies, the appropriate level of response activities, and other subjects. The Hazard Ranking System and the National Priorities List (described below) are appendices to the NCP.

There are two types of Superfund response: short-term "removals" to mitigate emergency situations, and long-term "remedial actions" to clean up sites that have been placed on the National Priorities List (NPL). The term "Superfund site" generally means a site on the NPL. After a potential site has been identified, a preliminary assessment is conducted to determine if a site inspection and ranking is warranted.

EPA had 12,657 active sites in its CERCLIS site tracking database at the end of FY1996. From January 1995 to September 30, 1996, 28,008 CERCLIS sites were archived, and categorized as "No Further Removal Action Planned" (NFRAP). This removal from the list has become important because the stigma of being associated with Superfund has often prevented sale or development of CERCLIS-listed property -- even if it was never contaminated in the first place.

Sites receiving a sufficiently high score under the Hazard Ranking System are placed on the NPL. As of the December 23, 1996 listing, there are 1,210 sites on the NPL, of which 151 are federal facility sites; another 49 are proposed for listing, of which 7 are federal facility sites. Proposed and final NPL sites total 1,259. As of September 30, 1996, EPA and the Coast Guard had also conducted 4,592 removal actions, 1,423 of them at NPL sites. (The Coast Guard is the lead agency in coastal areas.) There are or have been Superfund sites in all 50 States, as well as in American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Marianas, Puerto Rico, the Trust Territories of the Pacific, and the Virgin Islands. New Jersey has the most, with 112 sites.

After listing, the next step is the remedial investigation, a detailed examination of the site and the wastes present, which is followed by a feasibility study that examines alternative cleanup approaches. (These two steps are frequently referred to together as the "RI/FS.") EPA decides which alternative to pursue, and the Agency or its designee -- frequently the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers -- prepares specifications and drawings for the selected remedy. Cleanup construction may be followed by a requirement to operate, maintain, or monitor the site for several years. The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that the average cleanup time for the first 1,249 NPL sites will be at least 12 years. EPA deletes sites from the NPL when no further action is appropriate. As of June 1996, 412 sites (31% of the 1,335 total listed since inception) had been placed on the Construction Completion List; 125 of those sites have also been deleted from the NPL.

Relieving the Burden of Retroactive Liability

The most controversial element of CERCLA is its broad liability scheme. The generators of the hazardous substances, the transporters who selected the site, and the owners and operators (both past and present) of the facility or property where the substance was released are all made liable. Liability is strict, joint and several, and retroactive, and defenses allowed by the act are few. While pervasive policy reasons support this approach (e.g., polluters should pay rather than the taxpayers), the program has run into implementation problems with certain groups of potentially responsible parties (PRPs). Given that it is common for a waste disposal facility to have received wastes from throughout the region in which it operates, it is not unusual for there to be several hundred PRPs liable for cleanup costs at some Superfund sites. That, coupled with the high cost of cleanup -- the average cost is currently around $30 million per site -- has led PRPs to try to spread the costs as much as possible. The result has been a tremendous amount of litigation, not only among waste generators, but also between them and their insurance companies, which frequently claim that the policies they wrote were not intended to cover the kind of pollution, or the kind of liability, encountered at Superfund sites.

The litigation (and other related transaction costs) is both costly and time-consuming, and for years business and industry groups, especially the insurance industry, have called for the repeal of CERCLA's liability regime. The jurisdictional committees examined the issue during the 104th Congress, and considered repealing retroactive liability for actions prior to CERCLA's December 1980 passage, or alternatively prior to 1987. The January 1, 1987, cutoff date coincides with the use of new insurance policy language, as well as the institution of stricter solid waste record-keeping requirements.

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) said that repealing prior liability would reduce transaction costs and increase efficiency for the nation as a whole, but that the main trade-off is shifting responsibility for cleanup from PRPs to the federal government. To accommodate this shift without increasing the annual cost of the program would require some combination of cost savings, increased federal spending, and reduction in the pace of cleanup. Repealing liability for pre-1987 actions would save the nation as much as $1.1 billion annually in transaction costs, mainly from the private sector, according to CBO. The federal government would have a net increase in cleanup costs of $1.6 billion per year, plus a one-time cost of as much as $7.5 billion to reimburse PRPs for ongoing expenses under existing cleanup commitments, plus $6 billion for past costs. (A different set of assumptions would result in savings of transaction costs of $1 billion per year, an increased federal burden of $1.4 billion per year, and reimbursement costs of $6.5 billion for ongoing costs and $5.3 billion for past costs.)

If a cutoff date of December 31, 1980, is used, CBO said, private and federal transaction costs would fall about 50% and 30% respectively, compared with 90% under the 1987 cutoff. The shift in cleanup costs to the federal government would come to $1.3 billion per year, and reimbursing PRPs would total about $5.5 billion for ongoing work, and $4.4 billion for past work.

These high costs prompted the committees to look for ways other than full repeal of retroactive liability to reduce the liability burden, particularly for small businesses, lenders, and municipalities. The chairmen's bills from the 104th Congress, H.R. 2500 and S. 1285, are expected to provide models for 105th Congress legislation. Two of the liability elements expected to reappear in some form are: (1) a fast-track allocation process to apportion liability shares among the responsible parties, performed by a neutral allocator; and (2) exemptions or limits to liability for certain groups and certain categories of waste:

• small or de minimis parties (including most small businesses);

• municipalities, whose liability would be capped at 10% of total costs at NPL sites containing municipal solid waste or sewage sludge;

• oil recycling facilities, battery recycling facilities, facilities acquired by inheritance, and property contiguous to an NPL site; and

• construction contractors acting on the owner's orders.

Lender liability was addressed shortly before adjournment by the Asset Conservation, Lender Liability, and Deposit Insurance Protection Act of 1996, P.L. 104-208. It protects lenders and fiduciaries from CERCLA liability as long as they do not participate in the management of a facility contaminated with hazardous substances. Lenders at times have incurred liability after foreclosing on a contaminated property. This law details what actions a lender may take, which include activities related to his financial interest, and responding appropriately to the hazardous substance release.

Cleanup Standards and Remedy Selection -- Concerns Over Expense and Delay

Cleanup standards have also been controversial. CERCLA Section 121 states a preference for "treatment which permanently and significantly reduces the volume, toxicity or mobility of the hazardous substances, pollutants, and contaminants ..." (emphasis added). The Section also emphasizes cost effectiveness by referring to it several times as a factor to be considered in selecting remedies.

Section 121 also requires Superfund cleanups to meet "ARARs": any "legally applicable or relevant and appropriate standard, requirement, criteria or limitation" that has been promulgated under federal or state environmental laws. The ARARs include such things as the Clean Water Act's water quality criteria, the Solid Waste Disposal Act's land disposal restrictions, and some states' ground water anti-degradation provisions that require cleanup to background levels. EPA can waive the ARARs in some situations.

While these requirements (the preference for permanence and treatment, and the mandate to meet ARARs) have made Superfund a technology-forcing law, promoting research into new means of permanently eliminating contamination, they have also created at least three areas of concern. First, there is criticism that EPA's risk assessment process during the remedial investigation phase of response overstates the true risk posed to the vast majority of people. This phase is important because the assessment determines in large part what remedial actions might be appropriate for the site, and how much they will cost.

Second, critics say Section 121 has led to increased expense and delay. Despite the "cost effective" language in the statute, many PRPs have complained that EPA has little regard for cost when selecting the remedies they must implement. They suggest giving cost greater weight, eliminating ARARs or the preference for permanence and treatment, or taking future land use into consideration when selecting the remedy.

Third, experience with the Superfund program has shown that some cleanups are too difficult to achieve. The 1980 enactment did not foresee that some types of wastes and some kinds of sites were not amenable to solution with current levels of technology. While EPA can waive ARARs due to "technical impracticability," the waiver has not been greatly used, in part because of concern over public reaction.

Should Natural Resources Damages Be Narrowed?

CERCLA requires parties responsible for a release of hazardous substances that causes "an injury to, destruction of, or loss of natural resources" to reimburse the U.S. government and/or the appropriate state government for the costs of restoring the resources, or acquiring the equivalent of the natural resources damaged by the release. In the last Congress there were proposals to eliminate non-use damages, and to limit the amount of damages that could be awarded; $25 million and $50 million were proposed as appropriate limits. (Non-use values are those a person places on a resource that are unrelated to the person's actual use of it to date. Examples are the "option value" of hiking or fishing in a place one hasn't been to, the "existence value" of whooping cranes one hasn't seen and doesn't intend to, and the "bequest value" of passing a resource on to future generations.)

Non-use damages were not allowed by the chairmen's bills; only economic losses were recognized. The Senate bill also directed the President to issue new natural resource damage assessment regulations to determine the reasonable cost of restoration, and to require consideration of (1) natural recovery as a restoration method, and (2) the availability of replacement or alternative resources.

Giving States More Control of the Program

States have been lobbying for greater control over the Superfund program, and most parties agree they should have it. At present, EPA and states enter into cooperative agreements on a site-by-site basis that authorize the states to undertake most of the cleanup activities the Agency would perform. But this does not include remedy selection.

Under the chairmen's bills in the last Congress, states could receive full or partial delegation of CERCLA authority on either a statewide or site-by-site basis, with EPA's role limited to financial auditing and a narrow authority to take power back from the states if they do not carry out the law. States accepting full delegation could apply their own remedy selection laws. They would be given the power to veto EPA-proposed listings on the National Priorities List (NPL) and to remove all or part of a facility from the NPL.

The NPL-veto authority became law for a brief period of time. EPA's FY1996 appropriation act (P.L. 104-134) contained a provision, valid only until the end of the fiscal year, requiring the concurrence of a state's governor before a site in that state could be placed on the NPL. The requirement ended on September 30, 1996, because the FY1997 appropriations act contained no such language. The National Governors Association and several Senators expressed concern to EPA about the change, and the agency issued a memorandum to its regional headquarters directing them to determine the position of the governor on sites being considered for placement on the list. Legally, EPA has final authority on listings. Gubernatorial approval may reappear in reauthorization bills.

Another NPL-related issue is putting a cap on the list, limiting the number of additional sites. Last Congress's Senate bill would have allowed 90 more sites, 30 annually for 3 years. The House bill would have permitted a total of 125 additional sites over 8 years, declining from 30 in the first year to 10 in each of the last 3. The governors association opposes this, but business groups favor it.

Expanding the Brownfields Program

The brownfields program for cleaning up less serious industrial and commercial hazardous waste sites has been popular, and Congress appropriated $36.8 million for it for FY1997. The program targets idle or underused facilities where redevelopment is complicated by potential environmental contamination. It is an administrative initiative by EPA, done under Superfund's authority, but not specifically authorized in CERCLA. At least 16 bills on brownfields were introduced in the last Congress. And S. 1285, the Senate chairman's reauthorization bill, offered interest-free loans of up to $200,000 to local governments and Indian tribes for assessment of brownfield facilities. The House chairman's bill, H.R. 2500, did not address brownfields. The Clinton Administration's proposal (S. 1911 and H.R. 3747) provided no money directly but would have allowed developers to fully deduct from their taxes the costs of environmental cleanup at brownfields in the same year that the expenditures are incurred. The Treasury Department calculated that the bill would provide $2 billion in tax incentives, thereby leveraging $10 billion in private investment at an estimated 30,000 brownfields.

The very popularity of the program works against it politically. While it could easily pass separate from Superfund (as some Members wish), Commerce chairman Thomas Bliley, and Commerce subcommittee chairman Michael Oxley reportedly want it kept within a comprehensive reauthorization bill as an enticement to build support.

Aiding Voluntary Cleanup Programs for Lower Risk Sites

The Superfund program and state hazardous waste cleanup programs have focused on sites posing the greatest threat to human health and the environment. However, there remain many low- and medium-risk sites. For them, over 20 States have initiated voluntary cleanup programs in which the owner or developer works cooperatively with the state, as opposed to an often confrontational, enforcement-driven program. Remediation and certification of cleanup can take less time, and many states offer such additional benefits as technical assistance, financial support, and importantly, liability assurances. Last year's leading bills offered grants to states to establish and expand voluntary programs.

Action in the 105th Congress

Chairman Bob Smith of the Senate Environment and Public Works Subcommittee on Superfund , Waste Control, and Risk Assessment introduced the Superfund Cleanup Acceleration Act, S. 8, on January 21, 1997. It is one of 10 bills announced as the Senate Republican Agenda for the 105th Congress. The Congressional Budget Office has not costed the bill yet, but committee staff estimated that implementing it would cost $1.9 - $2.1 billion. Title I of S. 8 authorizes $15 million annually in grants to state, tribal, and local governments to assess brownfields, and $25 million annually to clean them up. It also provides $25 million annually to states to establish and expand voluntary cleanup programs. Sites cleaned under a voluntary program will not be subject to subsequent Superfund enforcement. It also provides liability protection to owners of property contiguous to a Superfund site, and to innocent purchasers of property who exercise due diligence.

Title II allows states to request delegation of federal authorities to perform one or more of the following activities at NPL sites that are not federal facilities: site investigations and risk analysis; development of remedial options and remedy selection; remedial design; remedial action and operation and maintenance; and liability allocation. A delegated state becomes the sole regulator at a site, and may apply both federal and state applicable laws. Grants to states are authorized to build their capability to carry out the Superfund program. Governors are given a veto power over new NPL site listings in their states.

Title III establishes Community Response Organizations of 15-20 local citizens to increase community participation at NPL sites. It doubles the amount of Technical Assistance Grants (TAGs) for community organizations, eliminates the fund-matching requirements, and authorizes early disbursement of $5,000. TAGs may be used to interpret information for the community.

Title IV addresses remedy selection, and institutes the fundamental rule that a remedy must be cost-effective and protective of human health and the environment, including groundwater. Remedies must be based on site specific conditions, and future use. It replaces CERCLA's preference for permanent treatment remedies with consideration of all cleanup options based on balancing the following factors: protection of health and the environment, cost, long-term reliability, shortterm risks, acceptance by the local community, and technical feasibility. The bill allows consideration of one or a combination of remediation methods including: removal, treatment, containment, institutional controls, and natural attenuation. An independent Remedy Review Board can reexamine an old remedy decision and recommend a new one if the new rules of this bill could save significant amounts; a governor can veto reopening a decision; and the cost of review is borne by the PRPs.

Title V is concerned with liability allocations. It exempts waste generators and transporters at co-disposal landfills for their activities prior to January 1, 1997. Co-disposal landfills are defined as those that predominantly received municipal solid waste and sewage sludge. The liability of owners and operators of codisposal landfills is capped as follows: (1) for communities with less than 100,000 population, the cap is the lesser of 10% of total costs, or equivalent closure costs of a non-hazardous waste landfill under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA); (2) for communities over 100,000 population, the cap is the lesser of 20% of total costs, or the equivalent RCRA closure costs; and (3) for private owners and operators, the cap is the lesser of 30%, or the equivalent RCRA closure costs. For small businesses and small waste contributors the following are exempt: (1) businesses with less than 30 employees or $3 million in gross revenues; (2) all generators and transporters of municipal solid waste and sewage sludge; (3) de minimis parties contributing less than 1% of the waste; (4) "de micromis" parties contributing less than 110 gallons or 200 pounds; and owners and operators of railroad spur tracks.

The liability of "501(c)(3) organizations" (religious, charitable, scientific and educational institutions) is limited to the liability of the gift that causes the liability. Recyclers of scrap paper, plastic, glass, textiles, rubber, metal, and batteries are exempted if they meet certain requirements that exclude sham recyclers. The bill establishes an allocation process for dividing liability at multi-party sites. The orphan share includes insolvent and defunct parties, and a proportional share of any unattributable volume. PRPs unwilling to accept the results of the allocation process are held liable under the current system of strict, joint, several, and retroactive liability. Settling parties are protected from third party suits. The bill also provides increased liability protection for response action contractors by excluding them from the definition of "owner or operator," and establishing a negligence standard for their activities at NPL sites.

Title VI allows the cleanup of federal facilities to be delegated to a state provided it uses the federal remedy selection process and standards. Only those state cleanup standards may be used that are also applied to non-federal sites. Federal facilities may be used to test innovative cleanup technologies.

Title VII amends CERCLA's natural resource damages (NRD) provisions. It eliminates non-use damages, and lost use damages for pre-1980 activities. It also encourages coordination between remedial action and restoration activities. The bill requires that the NRD restoration standards and restoration alternatives selected by a trustee not be duplicative of, or inconsistent with, actions undertaken during remedial actions.

Title VIII Miscellaneous. The bill requires EPA to establish a "results oriented" engineering approach to accelerate response actions, including site evaluations, response goals, and oversight. It limits the number of additional sites that can be added to the National Priorities List, as follows: 30 sites in 1997, 25 sites in 1998, 20 sites in 1999, 15 sites in 2000, and 10 sites per year thereafter. The bill also increases the authority for emergency response actions from $2 million to $4 million, and the time limit from 12 months to 24.

Title IX authorizes appropriations from the Fund of $8.5 billion for the 5-year period, FY1998 to FY2002, and continues the historical level of $250 million authorization per year from general revenues.

A freestanding amendment reinstates the Superfund taxes at their previous levels for 5 years.

LEGISLATION

S. 8 (Smith)
Superfund Cleanup Acceleration Act of 1997. See text above for details. Introduced January 21, 1997; referred to Committee on Environment and Public Works.

S. 18 (Lautenberg)
Introduced January 21, 1997; referred to the Committee on Environment and Public Works.

CONGRESSIONAL HEARINGS, REPORTS, AND DOCUMENTS

U.S. Congress. House. Committee on Commerce. Superfund Reauthorization, Parts 1, 2, and 3. Hearings, 104th Congress, March 16 to July 18, 1995.

U.S. Congress. House. Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure. Superfund Reauthorization. Hearings, 104th Congress, June 13 to July 11, 1995.

U.S. Congress. Senate. Committee on Environment and Public Works. Accelerated Cleanup and Environmental Restoration Act. Hearings, 104th Congress, April 23-24, 1996.

FOR ADDITIONAL READING

Kriz, Margaret. "The Superfund Saga," National Journal, October 21, 1995. p. 2592-2596.

----"War Over Wastes," National Journal, May 11, 1996. p. 1042-1046.

U.S. Congressional Budget Office. The Total Costs of Cleaning Up Nonfederal Superfund Sites. January 1994. 46 p.

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Superfund Administrative Reforms Annual Report, Fiscal Year 1996. December 1996. 56 p.

U.S. General Accounting Office. Superfund : Outlook for and Experience with Natural Resource Damage Settlements. April 1996. 42 p.

-----Superfund : Barriers to Brownfield Redevelopment. June 1996. 15 p.

CRS Reports

CRS Report 94-464 ENR. Superfund Fact Book. 54 p.

CRS Report 95-1076 ENR. Superfund Cleanup Standards Reconsidered. 24 p.

CRS Report 95-1129 ENR. Superfund Reauthorization Bills: A Comparison of S. 1285, Subcommittee-Approved H.R. 2500, and H.R. 228. 79 p.

CRS Report 96-25 ENR. Superfund Reauthorization in the Senate: A Summary of S. 1285. 9 p.

CRS Report 96-879 ENR. Brownfields Program: Cleaning Up Urban Industrial Sites (November 1996 Update). 5 p.