Support the Superfund Polluter Pays Restoration Act
Below you’ll find a letter written for the U.S. Senate in support of the Superfund Polluter Pays Restoration Act of 2017. If you are a former EPA employee who would like to sign on in support of the bill, please fill out the form at the bottom of the page.
If you have any questions about the letter or the bill, please contact former EPA Environmental Scientist Lynda Deschambault at lyndad925@gmail.com.
We the undersigned former EPA managers, engineers and scientists, are writing in support of SB2198: The Superfund Polluter Pays Restoration Act of 2017 (Booker (D-NJ), Menendez (D-NJ), and Whitehouse (D-RI)).
We are happy to support President Trump and Administrator Scott Pruitt in their effort to make the Superfund Program a priority for the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
SB2198 reinstates the excise tax on polluting industries to pay for the cleanup of Superfund sites, relieving taxpayers of the expense. The ‘Fund’ for Superfund was designed to pay for the cleanup of toxic waste sites. A fee placed on the petroleum and chemical industries generated the money for EPA to administer the program. This is known as the polluter pays principle.
Unfortunately, the Superfund tax expired in 1995, and Congress has failed to reauthorize it since then. As a result, most of the funding for cleanups now comes from taxpayers or from complicated legal settlements made with responsible parties to compel them to respond. But a cleanup lead by a corporate entity who is the polluter, is fraught with delays and can take decades and millions to complete.
EPA has experts on the science, technology, tools, and resources to complete the work. EPA is legislated to administer the Superfund program. Unfortunately, the EPA does not have adequate resources to clean up the more than 1,300 sites on the agency’s list of most polluted areas, including 89 locations that have “unacceptable human exposure” to substances that can cause birth defects, cancers, and developmental disorders. Reintroducing the fee, will ensure the EPA’s Superfund Trust Fund is again solvent, strong, and effective to protect the health of our families and the environment.
If the President and Administrator are serious about cleaning up our nation’s communities and making the superfund program great again, this is the way to do it. It is more critical than ever that Congress hold polluting industries accountable for the devastating consequences that have been brought on communities across the country. The number of sites on the Superfund’s National Priority List has increased by roughly one-third since 1999, federal resources have been cut by nearly 50 percent.
Please vote to support SB2198. It restores funding for the nation’s Superfund cleanup program to levels just above the program’s funding in the early 1990s (adjusted for inflation) to clean up toxic Superfund sites.
