Superfund Fact Book

by Mark Reisch & David Michael Bearden
Environment and Natural Resources Policy Division

Updated March 3, 1997

97-312 ENR

Superfund Fact Book (with glossary) in one omnibus file (212K) for printing .

Table of Contents

Background

Legislative History
Purposes
The Superfund Trust Fund

Appropriations
Number of Sites
National Priorities List

Construction Completions and Deletions
Federal Facilities
Number of Superfund Sites by State

Liability
Remedies

ARARs
Remedy Selection
Emergency Removal Actions
Length of Time to Remediation
Stages of Remediation

Costs

Capital Costs
EPA Enforcement and Costs to Potentially Responsible Parties (PRPs)
Transaction Costs
Insurers
Operation and Maintenance Costs

Waste at Superfund Sites
De Minimis Settlements
Orphan Share Settlements
Natural Resource Damages
Land Use
Health Issues and the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry

Public Health Assessments
Epidemiologic Studies
Overall Assessment of Public Health Impact
Toxicological Databases

International Comparisons

Austria
Canada
Denmark
Germany
Netherlands
Sweden
Mexico

Glossary of Superfund Terms
Endnotes

List of Tables

Table 1. Superfund Corporate Environmental Income Taxes in 1993 by Industrial Sector
Table 2. Superfund Corporate Environmental Income Taxes in 1993 by Major Industry
Table 3. Superfund Appropriations: FY1981-FY1998 Request
Table 4. Number of Superfund Sites by State
Table 5. Common Sources of Waste at Superfund Sites
Table 6. Types of Contaminants Commonly Found at Superfund Sites
Table 7. Five Largest Natural Resource Damage Settlements at Superfund Sites as of July 1995
Table 8. On-Site and Surrounding Land Uses at Superfund Sites
Table 9. Common Sources of Funding for State Cleanup Activities

List of Figures

Figure 1. Superfund Appropriations from FY1981-FY1998 Request
Figure 2. FY1997 Superfund Appropriations
Figure 3. Status of the National Priorities List as of December 23, 1996
Figure 4. Legal Expenses as a Share of Total Costs at Superfund Sites
Figure 5. Estimated Share of Activities Leading to Operations and Maintenance Costs at Superfund Sites
Figure 6. Public Health Assessments of Superfund Sites from 1993-1995

Note

This report replaces CRS Report 94-464 ENR (now archived), Superfund Fact Book, dated May 26, 1994.

SUMMARY

The Superfund program is the principal federal effort for cleaning up inactive hazardous waste sites and protecting public health and the environment from releases of hazardous substances. The Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act of 1980 (CERCLA) established the program, and the Superfund Amendments and Reauthorization Act of 1986 (SARA) amended it. This report is a compendium of data and other pertinent information about CERCLA and the Superfund program, followed by a glossary.

The law's strict, joint and several, and retroactive liability regime requires responsible parties to pay for cleaning up a site. However, CERCLA established the Hazardous Substance Superfund Trust Fund to pay for cleanups where a financially viable party cannot be found. The trust fund has raised about $1.5 billion per year for cleanup activities, primarily from excise taxes on petroleum and specified chemical feedstocks, and from a corporate environmental income tax, all of which expired on December 31, 1995. The trust fund also pays for the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) enforcement, management activities, and research and development. For FY1997, Congress enacted appropriations of $1.5 billion for the Superfund program (P.L. 104-204), and the FY1998 Administration request is $2.2 billion.

The National Priorities List (NPL) specifies the sites that most seriously threaten public health and the environment. As of December 23, 1996, the NPL contained 1,259 current and proposed sites, of which 158 are federal facilities. The Construction Completion List (CCL) catalogs NPL sites where physical construction is complete for all necessary cleanup and removal actions. There currently are 412 sites on the CCL. Excluding federal facilities, construction is complete at 410 sites, representing 34.8% of the total 1,178 non-federal sites that EPA has placed on the NPL since the Superfund program began.

In addition to being responsible for cleanup costs, polluters also must pay to restore damaged or lost natural resources at Superfund sites. As of April 1995, federal agencies had settled 98 natural resource damage claims with the responsible parties for a total of $106 million.

The Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry assesses the impact of hazardous substance releases on public health. As of December 31, 1996, the agency had completed 1,736 public health assessments at Superfund sites.

State programs to clean up hazardous waste sites have grown considerably during the past several years, and each state has enacted its own enforcement authority. At the end of 1995, the states reported a total of almost 30,000 potentially hazardous sites warranting attention. During FY1995, 44 states actively managed cleanups, and all states except for Nebraska and the District of Columbia have established their own funds to pay for cleanup activities, of which the states spent a total of $386 million in FY1995.

Background

CRS has prepared this fact book to assist Members and Committees of Congress and their staffs in considering possible Superfund reauthorization legislation in the 105th Congress. For a current discussion of policy issues and legislation, see CRS Issue Brief 95013, Superfund Reauthorization in the 105th Congress. Other CRS products on Superfund include:

Brownfields Program: Cleaning Up Urban Industrial Sites. by Mark Reisch. CRS Report 96-879 ENR. Updated Nov.14, 1996. 5 p.

Escaping Superfund Liability: the Innocent Landowner and Lender Exceptions. by Robert Meltz. CBS Report 91-91 A. Updated August 15, 1991. 18 p.

Superfund Cleanup Standards Reconsidered. by Lisa Gray. CRS Report 95-1076 ENR. October 25, 1995. 24 p.

Taxes to Finance Superfund. by Salvatore Lazzari. CRS Report 96-774 E. September 13, 1996. 8 p.

 

Legislative History

On December 11, 1980, Congress enacted the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA) to create the Superfund hazardous substance cleanup program.¹ The Superfund Amendments and Reauthorization Act of 1986 (SARA) made numerous changes to CERCIA to expand the program's scope.² The Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1990 extended the law's taxing authority through December 31, 1995, which expired at the end of 1991 under SARA.³

Purposes

CERCLA's impetus was the emerging realization that inactive hazardous waste sites presented great risk to public health and the environment in all parts of the nation, that state and local governments did not have the capability to respond, and that existing federal environmental and disaster relief laws were inadequate. The Love Canal site in Niagara Falls, New York first brought the issue to national prominence when the state health commissioner declared a state of emergency there on August 2, 1978.

CERCLA's purpose is to authorize the federal government to respond swiftly to hazardous substance emergencies and to protect public health and the environment by cleaning up the nation's worst hazardous waste sites. The law seeks to make those responsible for the improper disposal of hazardous waste bear the costs and accept responsibility for their actions, and it also established the Hazardous Substance Superfund Trust Fund to finance response actions where a liable party cannot be found or is incapable of paying cleanup costs.

For information on Superfund not included in this fact book, please refer to the following resources:

EPA Superfund Hotline 703-412-9810 in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area or 1-800-424-9346 outside of Washington. Superfund Internet Sites EPA's Superfund Homepage at http://www.epa.gov/superfund Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry at http://atsdr1.atsdr.cdc.gov:8080/atsdrhome.html National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, Superfund Basic Research Program at http://www.niehs.nih.gov/sbrp/home.htm

The Superfund Trust Fund

Excise taxes imposed on the petroleum and chemical industries as well as an environmental income tax on corporations maintained the Hazardous Substance Superfund Trust Fund through December 31, 1995. Taxing authority for Superfund expired at the end of 1995, and Congress has not enacted legislation to reauthorize the tax. FY1995 was the last full fiscal year in which the Department of the Treasury collected the tax. General revenues also contribute to the trust fund.⁴

As of September 30, 1996, the invested trust fund balance was $6.0 billion. Of the amounts in the trust fund, $3.0 billion was available for obligation.

The Hazardous Substance Superfund Trust Fund was supported by:

· a tax on domestically produced and imported oil (about $576 million in FY1995);

· a tax on feedstock chemicals (about $291 million in FY199S);

· a corporate environmental income tax (about $612 million in FY1995);

· general revenues (authorized at $250 million per fiscal year); and

· reimbursements, penalties, and interest on the trust fund.⁵

The Superfund corporate environmental income tax generated $566.4 million in 1993. Table 1 lists the major industrial sectors that contributed to this tax.

Table 1. Superfund Corporate Environmental Income

Taxes in 1993 by Industrial Sector

Industrial Sector	$ Thousands	Percentage
Manufacturing	224,307	39.6
Finance, insurance, and real estate	165,076	29.1
Transportation and public utilities	94,339	16.7
Retail trade	31,994	5.6
Services	23,074	4.1
Wholesale trade	17,905	3.2
Mining	5,779	1.0
Construction	2,515	0.4
Agriculture, forestry, and fishing	1,144	0.2

Source: Prepared by CRS with data from the U.S. Department of the Treasury.Internal Revenue Service. Source Book, Statistics of Imcome, 1993: Corporation Income Tax Returns with Accounting Periods ended July 1993 - June 1994. Publication 1053 (Revised March 1996). 511 p. The March 1996 revision of this publication reflects the most recent data on the amount of the tax collected from the industrial sectors.

Table 2 lists the major industries within the above industrial sectors that contributed to the corporate environmental income tax.

Table 2. Superfund Corporate Environmental Income

Taxes in 1993 by Major Industry

Industry	$ Thousands	Percentage
Manufacturing
Chemical and allied products	42,008	7.4
Petroleum and coal products	28,137	5.0
Electrical and electronic equipment	26,601	5.0
Motor vehicles and equipment	21,173	3.7
Printing and publishing	10,703	1.9
Transportation and Public Utilities
Electric, gas, and sanitary services	41,624	7.3
Communication	41,570	7.3
Finance
Insurance	64,622	11.4
Banking	57,889	10.2
Credit agencies other than banks	2,857	4.0
Security, commodity brokers, and services	11,373	2.0

Source: Prepared by CBS with data from the U.S. Department of the Treasury. Internal Revenue Service. Source Book, Statistics of Income, 1993: Corporation Income Tax Returns with Accounting Periods ended July 1993 - June 1994. Publication 1053 Revised March 1996). 511 p. The March 1996 revision of this publication reflects the most recent data on the amount of the tax collected from the major industries.

Endnotes

1 P.L. 96-510, 94 Stat. 2767 (1980). CERCLA, as amended, is codified at 42 U.S.C. 9601-9675.

2 P.L. 99-499, 100 Stat. 1613 (1986).

3 P.L. 101-508, §6301, 104 Stat. 1388-319 (1990).

4 For additional details, see Taxes to Finance Superfund. by Sal Lazzari. CRS Report 96-774 E. September 13, 1996. 8 p.

5 U.S. Department of the Treasury. Financial Management Service. "Hazardous Substance Superfund Trust Fund (20X8145) Income Statement for the Period 10/01/94 Through 09/30/95." November 3, 1995. 2 p.