The abandoned Atlas Tack factory in the seaside town of Fairhaven, Mass., is one of America’s most contaminated hazardous-waste sites. A block from an elementary school, the dilapidated plant sits near marshy lands and lagoons polluted with arsenic, cyanide, solvents and heavy metals.
This year, Atlas Tack was among 10 toxic-waste sites nationwide whose cleanup was delayed. Meanwhile, the Bush administration added 10 sites to the Superfund program that have a greater potential for economic redevelopment.
When the shuttered nail factory was added to the Superfund list in 1990, the program was paid for in part by a tax on chemical and petroleum industries. Congress allowed the tax to expire in 1995 despite President Bill Clinton’s request for reauthorization. President George Bush did not request a renewal of the tax.
Without the companies’ contributions, only taxpayer money is going to Superfund-and it
isn’t enough. Places like Atlas Tack, where trespassers could be sickened by touching contaminated soil, are not being cleaned up.
With the cleanup stalled at Atlas for the second year in a row, the Environmental Protection Agency this year filed a $25 million lawsuit against the defunct Atlas Tack to recoup the federal funds already spent.
The country is dotted with tens of thousands of polluted sites, the toxic legacy of old factories, sloppy smelters, mines, military bases and chemical plants. Superfund, the 1980 law designed to force those who made the mess to clean it up-even if the plants have been sold or shut down-targets the most dangerous.
But Superfund is in trouble. And for the first time since the program’s inception, the Bush administration is raising a controversial question: Who is responsible for the 30 percent of all cases in which the polluter cannot be found or will not claim responsibility?
In the past the answer has been industry. But responsibility is shifting to the taxpayer because the corporate tax has not been reauthorized.
Congress still provides $1.2 billion a year for Superfund but Bush has argued that the original corporate tax unfairly burdens companies not responsible for the contamination. In the past, most of the contaminated sites were linked to chemical and production wastes, according to Marianne Horinko, assistant administrator of the EPA. The corporate tax has little connection to the mining sites and polluted harbors and river bottoms that are an increasingly large part of the Superfund budget.
“Superfund is the cleanup party of last resort-a government function properly paid for by taxpayers,” she said.
The fund for “orphaned” sites has dwindled from a high of $3.8 billion in 1996 to nearly zero, meaning Superfund activity-usually paid for by the corporate tax and general revenue-will be supported by general revenue.
In 1996, the tax fund contributed about 75 percent of Superfund’s operating budget; it has been declining since. Last year, it contributed about 25 percent, according to EPA officials.
The rate of cleanup has declined for the third straight year.
In the mid and late-1990s, Superfund cleaned up an average of 86 sites per year, but that number has since fallen by nearly 50 percent in the last two years. Last year, seven projects were unfunded. This year, the EPA couldn’t pay for 12 sites, including Atlas Tack.
The remaining sites are large, expensive and complicated, which is partially responsible for the slowdown, EPA officials said. The other reason for slower action is the dwindling Superfund coffers.
Katherine Probst, a senior fellow at Resources for the Future, says the important issue is that cleanups have slowed.
“Once Congress appropriates money, it really doesn’t matter where it comes from,” said Probst, co-author of “Superfund’s Future.” “What’s important is ‘Do they have the money to implement the program?’ These sites already take a long time to address and clean up. To the public, that’s more important.”
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THE ISSUE:
The Superfund program for cleaning up abandoned pollution sites is running out of money.
RECENT ACTION:
George Bush is the first president since Superfund was created who has not asked Congress to reauthorize a tax on chemical and petroleum industries used to pay for some cleanups.
‘The Bush administration is leaving toxic messes in the back yards of American taxpayers for longer periods of time and forcing those same taxpayers to foot the bill for cleanups.’
— Julie Wolk, an environmental health advocate
‘But the Superfund program has not been as successful as it should be, because too often Superfund cleanups became a matter between lawyers and not a matter between cleanup crews.’
— Former White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer
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THE AUTHORS OF THIS REPORT
Pete Souza is the Tribune’s national photographer, based in the Washington bureau. He traveled to 13 states during the last year to take the photographs in this report.
Julie Deardorff is a staff reporter who has written extensively about health and the environment.
