What is a "Superfund?"
What is a Superfund? Reading it aloud, one might hear “super fun,” and seeing it on paper, perhaps the lottery comes to mind. Unfortunately, however, Superfund is a dire term, and at the very least, it can be quite boring and bureaucratic. And while money is involved, Superfund is a lottery few would be glad to win.
Superfund is the nickname for CERCLA, the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act, which was enacted in 1980 and expanded the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) ability to deal with environmental hazards on a large scale. Among the hazards found at Superfund sites, contaminants often include lead, asbestos, radiation, and dioxins.
According to the EPA, CERCLA originally included regulations for toxic waste sites, modes of establishing liability for responsible polluters at hazardous waste sites, a tax on hazardous chemical and petroleum substances, and the creation of a trust fund that would cover clean-up costs for “orphan sites,” sites where no potentially responsible party (PRP) could be found or PRPs couldn’t pay. PRPs can be companies, owners of sites, government entities, and generally, anyone found liable for Superfund contamination.
The idea behind CERCLA is that the EPA can “[force] the parties responsible for the contamination to either perform cleanups or reimburse the government for EPA-led cleanup work.” When this isn’t possible, CERCLA’s trust fund — known as the Superfund — is put toward the cleanup.
To determine which sites get CERCLA’s attention, the EPA created the National Priorities List (NPL), a list of sites that pose the most urgent threats of contamination. As of March 7th, 2024, there have been 1,797 sites selected for the NPL, a number whittled down from over 50,000 sites assessed by Superfund and counting.
Before a site can be added to the NPL, the EPA gathers information from a site by conducting a preliminary assessment and site inspection. During these stages, the EPA studies the history of the contaminated site and conducts tests to see what hazards are present at the site and if these hazards pose threats to the environment and human health.
With this information, the sites that make it to the NPL are then determined by the Hazard Ranking System (HRS), a scoring method ranging from 0 to 100 that takes into account the “likelihood that a site has released or has the potential to release hazardous substances into the environment; characteristics of the waste (e.g. toxicity and waste quantity); and people or sensitive environments (targets) affected by the release.” Scores are calculated individually through four routes of exposure — “ground water migration… surface water migration… soil exposure and subsurface intrusion… and air migration.” These scores are then used to calculate an overall site score.
A minimum score of about 28.5 out of 100 can warrant inclusion on the NPL. This may appear as an arbitrary cut-off, but the agency asserted its usefulness in assigning priorities. The EPA’s confidence in this number came after a study of 110 sites showed that “few sites score in the range of 25 to 30 with the revised HRS model.”
Hence, there’s little concern on the EPA’s part that potential contaminated sites of priority are slipping through the cracks of this 28.5 threshold. However, in the 2017 revision to the HRS rules, the inclusion of the subsurface intrusion variable to HRS scoring was speculated to “raise the overall site score at some sites with ground water drinking water contamination from below the 28.5 cut-off score to above it.” So while the cut-off remains, the EPA has shown flexibility in determining how sites can reach the priority range. But such flexibility is uncommon. The 2017 inclusion of the subsurface intrusion variable was the first change to the HRS in twenty-seven years, and no changes have been made since.
Given the sheer dangers posed by Superfund sites, it’s easy — if not comforting — to imagine them occupying remote parts of the country, areas like deserts or deep in the mountains. But the reality of Superfund sites is an intimate one. A 2023 EPA report found that 23 million people lived within one mile of a Superfund site and 78 million people lived within three miles of a Superfund site, numbers which, since 2020, rose from 21 million and 73 million respectively. And, as the report states, those who live near Superfund sites are often “more minority, low income, linguistically isolated, and less likely to have a high school education than the U.S. population as a whole.” The toll of Superfund does not fall equally.
As of March 7th, 2024, the EPA has deleted 457 sites from the National Priorities List, and of the 1,797 current and deleted NPL sites, as well the handful of Superfund Alternative sites, 1,242 constructions have been completed, “a milestone that indicates all physical construction required for the cleanup of the entire site has been completed (even though final cleanup levels may not have been achieved).”
Cleanups of these sites have unambiguous benefits. A 2011 study from the National Bureau of Economic Research found that Superfund cleanups resulted in a 20-25% reduction in birth defects within a 5km radius of 154 sites. And a 2019 National Center for Environmental Economics (NCEE) study found that cleanups of lead-contaminated Superfund sites resulted in an 8-18% drop in blood lead levels of children within 2 kilometers of these sites. These are drops in a pool of research illustrating the benefits of Superfund cleanups — benefits which shouldn’t come as a surprise. But even so, Superfund has often found itself neglected by the federal government.
While the cost of most Superfund site cleanups is covered by PRPs, orphan sites depend on Federal money for their cleanups. However, in 1995 the Superfund excise tax, which helped fund cleanups for these orphan sites through taxes on hazardous chemicals and petroleum, expired and wasn’t renewed. PRPs would still be obligated to cover cleanup costs when possible, but the Superfund would no longer be supplemented by corporate tax dollars and would have to subsist on money from the federal budget. But from 1999 to 2013, federal funding for Superfund shrunk as did spending at nonfederal NPL sites. The name “Superfund” became something of a misnomer, and the toll on the budget resulted in considerable delays to cleanups. “The decline in funding led EPA to delay the start of about one-third of the new remedial action projects that were ready to begin in a given fiscal year at nonfederal NPL sites from fiscal years 1999 through 2013.”
However, in 2021, under the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, the Superfund excise tax was reinstated. It went into effect in 2022 and will continue through 2031. In that decade, it is estimated to generate around $14.45 billion dollars in tax revenue, money that can be put toward Superfund sites. The bill also provided an additional $3.5 billion dollars to the Superfund trust fund.
In 2021, the EPA announced it would use this boost to funding to “initiate cleanup and clear the backlog of 49 previously unfunded Superfund sites and accelerate cleanup at dozens of other sites across the country.” And for now, Superfund appears to be keeping its initial momentum. In 2023, the EPA announced that $1 billion dollars from the infrastructure bill’s original $3.5 billion dollar investment in the Superfund would be used “to start new cleanup projects at 22 Superfund sites and expedite over 100 other ongoing cleanups across the country.” After Superfund’s lurch, the program appears back on track, tending to neglected sites and increasing the pace of cleanups.
However, while committing more resources toward Superfund’s cleanup efforts will no doubt be good for the environment, the surrounding communities, and those who live near sites, these site cleanups are often paced by federal spending and temporary tax measures, neither of which are guaranteed. While the Biden Administration’s support helps the program, the current excise tax may not be renewed come 2031, and Superfund may very well slouch into reduced funding under a different congress or presidential administration. For a program tasked with containing and cleaning some of the country’s most contaminated hazardous waste sites, Superfund’s response capacity can sway with political currents. Still, for the time being, there’s optimism for the future of the program.
To learn more about the Superfund cleanup process, visit the EPA’s website.
Bibliography
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