Superfund Fact Book
Mark Reisch & David Michael Bearden

Table of Contents for this Section

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
Endnotes
Glossary of Superfund Terms [External]

List of Tables

Table 5. Common Sources of Waste at Superfund Sites
Table 6. Types of Contaminants Commonly Found at Superfund Sites

List of Figures

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

Remedies

CERCIA requires the lead agency for a site to select remedial actions that protect human health and the environment, are cost-effective, and utilize permanent solutions, alternative technologies, or resource recovery technologies to the maximum extent practicable. To evaluate the cost-effectiveness of a remedy, the lead agency must consider the total short-term and long-term costs, including the costs of operation and maintenance.²⁷

ARARs

CERCLA does not contain any cleanup standards but instead requires the lead and support agencies for a site to select remedy standards that comply with other existing federal environmental laws and regulations. CERCLA requires that the lead and support agencies use "applicable or relevant and appropriate requirements" (ARARs) to select these standards.²⁸

Remedy Selection

· Treatment means a process that significantly reduces the volume, toxicity, or mobility of hazardous substances. Containment is a remediation method that seals off all possible exposure pathways between a hazardous disposal site and the environment, which generally includes capping and institutional controls. Removal, or emergency removal, is an action taken by the EPA under the emergency removal provisions of CERCLA, that enables the agency to take preliminary steps to clean up a site or reduce its danger when there is an imminent and substantial threat to public health or the environment. An emergency removal cannot exceed $2 million or one year for any one action at any one site.

· EPA selected treatment as the remedy for 78% of sites with ground water contamination, and 65% with surface water contamination. When soil contamination occurred, EPA selected treatment at 50% of sites. EPA tends to select containment remedies for large volumes of waste at sites (for example, greater than one million cubic yards), and treatment remedies for small volumes of waste (less than 1,000 cubic yards). ³³

Emergency Removal Actions

· The emergency removal program responds to short-term emergencies at hazardous disposal sites requiring immediate action. There were 4,020 emergency removal projects completed from FY1981 through FY1996, of which 1,226 were at Superfund sites.³⁴

Length of Time to Remediation

Using the best available data, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated in March 1994 that the average time of cleanup for the first 1,249 Superfund sites would be at least 12 years. Because of data limitations, CBO stated that a more accurate average likely would lie between 13 and 15 years.³⁵

A preliminary assessment study, on average, takes 95-145 hours to complete; a remedial investigation/feasibility study 18-30 months; and a remedial design 12-18 months to complete.³⁶

· On average, a period of more than 8 years lapses from the time a site is discovered to the time definitive remediation work begins. During this time, the remedial investigation is completed. In addition, delays are caused by negotiations and litigation among EPA, state agencies, potentially responsible parties, insurers, and municipalities negotiating who is responsible for paying the remediation costs.³⁷

Stages of Remediation

At the end of FY1996, the status of the 1,387 Superfund sites (including proposed sites, and sites deleted from the NPL) was:

- 14 proposed sites with evaluation for immediate threat completed, but action not begun;

- 27 final sites with evaluation for immediate threat completed, but action not begun;

- 19 sites with removal-only actions;

- 203 sites where studies were underway;

- 77 sites where remedies had been selected;

- 140 sites where designs were underway;

- 491 sites where construction was underway;

- 410 sites where construction was complete for all necessary remedial and removal actions (412 sites as of December 23, 1996); and

- 124 sites deleted from the NPL, including six sites deleted by referral to another authority (132 deleted sites as of December 23, 1996, including seven deferred sites). ³⁸

Costs

· A CBO study released in January 1994 estimated that it could take $75 billion to clean up a total of 4,500 sites now in need of work (including current NPL sites, and ones to be added in the future). ³⁹

· The Joint Institute for Energy & Environment (JIEE) estimated that cleanup costs could be reduced by about 35% through increased use of institutional controls and containment remedies (in place of destruction and isolation technologies), while essentially protecting human health and the environment at the same levels of safety.⁴⁰

· The JIEE estimated total cleanup costs under this less stringent scenario to be $34.1 billion for an NPL of 1,350 sites; $53.0 billion if there were 2,100 sites; and $75.7 billion for 3,000 sites.⁴¹

· EPA last projected total funding requirements for the Superfund program in its annual report to Congress for FY1990, which estimated funding requirements of $16.4 billion from FY1993 through future fiscal years, and a future cumulative total of $27.2 billion in funding requirements since the program's beginning in 1981. EPA based its estimates on the 1,268 sites placed on the NPL as of the end of FY1993.

Capital Costs

· The average capital cost at a non-federal facility site is $21.8 million. Site assessment, studies, and design comprise approximately 11% of total site costs, resulting in an average cost of approximately $25 million.⁴²

· A relatively small number of very expensive sites raise the average cost significantly. Over 60% of all capital cleanup costs are accounted for by only 16% of the operable units (OUs). An operable unit is a division of a site cleanup project; on average, there are 1.8 OUs at a non-federal site.⁴³

· 69% of Superfund sites have capital costs of less than $10 million. ⁴⁴

· 38% have capital costs of less than $3 million. ⁴⁵

· Site managers expect capital costs to exceed $20 million at 296 sites (232 non-federal sites and 64 federal facilities). The most common factors contributing to these estimates are large volumes of contaminated media, site complexities, and high treatment costs. ⁴⁶

EPA Enforcement and Costs to (PRPs)

- The Superfund program enforcement budget for FY1997 is $171.2 million, or approximately 11.3% of the total Superfund appropriation of $1.5 billion.

- Responsible parties are paying increasing amounts of the cost of cleanup.

- According to EPA, the share of remediation costs for liable parties in FY1987 was 37%, and the trust fund's share was 63%. By the end of 1996, liable parties were performing or paying for more than 70% of long-term cleanups. ⁴⁷

- The cumulative value of cleanup activities that private parties have committed to since the beginning of the Superfund program exceeds $10 billion. ⁴⁸

Transaction Costs

Transaction costs are a PRP's expenses for activities other than performing remedies to clean up a site. A PRP most commonly incurs transaction costs from legal expenses to negotiate its cleanup liability and settlement with EPA, to collect insurance claims for cleanup costs, and to litigate with other parties that may have contributed to a release. However, transaction costs also may include expenses for activities other than litigation, such as laboratory testing for levels of contamination in soil samples.

· GAO conducted a 1994 survey of Fortune 500 Industrial and Fortune 500 Service Corporations to compile information on transaction costs of major U.S. corporations. Of these 1,000 corporations, 367 reported that they had been a PRP at a Superfund site and had incurred legal expenses during the cleanup process. Eighty-one corporations reported spending $100,000 or less on cleanup costs, and 38 reported spending over $20 million. The average total cleanup cost for an individual corporation was $1.5 million, of which each corporation spent an average of $500,000 on legal expenses

· Corporations with a major share of liability at three or more sites incurred an average of $3.5 million in legal expenses for each site, representing 28% of their total cleanup cost. De minimis parties (small volume waste contributors) incurred an average of $32,000 in legal expenses for each site, representing 46% of their total cleanup cost. The data indicated that legal expenses do rise with a PRP's cleanup cost but that a PRP's legal expenses as a percentage of their total cleanup cost decline as the share for liability rises. De minimis parties incurred the least amount of total cleanup expenses, but their legal expenses as a percentage of their total cleanup costs were the highest. ⁵⁰ (See figure 4.)

Figure 4

Legal Expenses as a Share of Total Costs at Superfund Sites

· The surveyed corporations identified three factors that could contribute to lowering legal expenses:

1) Complete identification of all PRPs;

2) Effective enforcement of each PRP's liability; and

3) Accurate volumetric data on each PRP's contribution to a release.

Approximately 52% of the surveyed corporations stated that joining a PRP group helped to lower legal expenses by encouraging cooperation among the parties and avoiding litigation over parties that did not fulfill their responsibilities for their share of the liability. ⁵¹

Insurers

· Insurers and those who are insured spend approximately $500 million each year on Superfund litigation involving insurance coverage. ⁵²

· Insurance companies are experiencing substantial increases in their payments for PRP Superfund claims. A GAO study of the nation's largest propertylcasualty insurers found that, before 1987, 10 of 13 studied companies made a total of approximately $11 million in payments to their policy holders. From 1987 to 1991, however, the 13 companies paid approximately $144 million in claims. ⁵³

· According to a RAND study of four national insurance carriers involving over 13,000 claims, 88% of total expenditures by insurance companies to PRP policyholders covered transaction costs such as corporate legal fees; 12% of payments were for corporate remedial activities. RAND calculated that if its sample were representative of the whole insurance industry, insurers spent $470 million on claims involving inactive hazardous waste sites in 1989. ⁵⁴

Operation and Maintenance Costs

After constructing remedies to clean up a site, additional activities may be necessary to ensure that the remedy continues to function effectively to protect human health and the environment.⁵⁵ These activities commonly include maintaining landfill covers, treating contaminated ground water, or restricting the use of land or water adjacent to a site. Operation and maintenance (O&M) costs are the expenses to perform these activities.

· States are responsible for assuring the effective operation and maintenance of remedial constructions or other controls, and PRPs are financially responsible for their share of O&M costs at a site. However, if the site is being paid for by the Superfund program (is "Fund-financed"), and the remedy involves restoring ground or surface water to safe levels, EPA is responsible for the cost of the first 10 years of the remedy, after which it becomes the state's responsibility.⁵⁶ The pertinent federal agency is responsible for O&M costs at federal facilities.

· As of May 1995, there were 275 Superfund sites where remedial constructions were complete. Of these sites, 173 required long-term O&M, and the remaining 102 used remedies that did not require it (for example, successfully treating surface waste).⁵⁷

· Restoring contaminated ground or surface water to safe levels represents the largest portion of O&M costs, about 47%. Remedies that only include containing surface waste represent the smallest portion, about 12%. Maintaining both of these remedies accounts for 36%, and maintaining other remedies accounts for the remaining 5% of O&M costs.⁵⁸ (See figure 5.)

· EPA estimates that the average duration for O&M to completely clean up or maintain a site will be 30 years, and GAO estimates that the average O&M costs per site will be $12 million during this period. However, these costs may be greater if the duration exceeds 30 years. An EPA survey of its regional project managers indicated that about 20% of Superfund sites will require O&M for more than 30 years. For example, sites where the remedy is containing waste will require O&M indefinitely to maintain and periodically repair the waste cover.⁵⁹

· In FY1994, O&M costs at Superfund sites totalled $148 million, but these costs likely will increase substantially in the future as remedial constructions are completed over the next decade. GAO estimates that annual O&M costs will approach $1 billion by FY2O1O.⁶⁰

· GAO estimates that O&M costs for current and future sites will total almost $32 billion through FY2040. Of this estimate, the federal government would be responsible for approximately $5 billion, the states for $8 billion, and the responsible parties for $18 billion. EPA estimates a higher amount of $37 billion for O&M costs through FY2040.⁶¹

^{Figure 5}

^{Estimated Share of Activities Leading to
Operation and Maintenance Costs at Superfund Sites}

Prepared by CRS with data from GAO. Superfund: Operations and Maintenance Activities Will Require Billions of Dollars. GAO/RCED 95-275. September 1995. p. 9.

Waste at Superfund Sites

The Record of Decision (ROD) is a formal document by which an EPA administrator (usually the Regional Administrator) chooses the remedy for cleaning up a specific type of contamination at a Superfund site.⁶² EPA's Superfund Homepage on the internet at http://www.epa.gov/superfund provides information on RODs for specific Superfund sites.

· Soil contamination occurs at 80% of the Superfund sites with RODs yet to be implemented.⁶³

· Ground water contamination occurs at nearly 79% of Superfund sites with RODs.⁶⁴

· A variety of sources contribute waste to Superfund sites, which can lead to soil or ground water contamination. Manufacturing operations contribute the largest share of the waste, while mining activities contribute the smallest portion. Table 5 indicates the most common sources of waste at Superfund sites and the percentage share of the total waste for each source.

Table 5. Common Sources of Waste at Superfund Sites

Source: EPA. OSWER. Superfund: Focusing on the Nation at Large. 1992. p.8.

Liquid waste is present at 92.4% of all Superfund sites, solid waste at 58.3%, and sludge at 49.2%. ⁶⁵ Table 6 lists the types of contaminants that are commonly found at Superfund sites.

Table 6. Types of Contaminants Commonly Found at Superfund Sites

Endnotes

27 42 U.S.C. 9621. "Cleanup Standards."

28 42 U.S.C. 9621(d). "Degree of Cleanup."

29 40 CFR 300.400(g)(1). "Identification of applicable or relevant and appropriate requirements."

30 40 CFR 300.400(g)(2).

31 40 CFR 300.400(g)(3).

32 40 CFR 300.400(g)(4).

33 EPA. Office of Emergency and Remedial Response (OERR). 1991.

34 EPA. OERR. Telephone conversation with Terry Eby. January 14,1997.

35 U.S. Congressional Budget Office. Analyzing the Duration of Cleanup at Sites on Superfund's National Priorities List. March 1994. p.2.

36 Guerrero, Peter. Superfund: Current Progress and 188ue8 Needing Further Attention. GAO Testimony. June 1992. p.8.

37 Acton, Jan Paul. Understanding Superfund. RAND Institute for Social Justice. 1989.

38 EPA. OERR. End of the Year FYl996 Superfund Historical Performance Report.

39 U.S. Congress. Congressional Budget Office. The Total Costs of Cleaning Up Nonfederal Supe~nd Sites. Washington, U.S. GPO, 1994.

40 Milton Russell and Kimberly L Davis. Resource Requirements for NPL Sites: Phase II Interim Report. Knoxville, JIEE, September 1995. 60 p. JIEE is a research consortium of Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the Tennessee Valley Authority, and the University of Tennessee. The authors "suggest that [these] study results should supersede" those of the earlier studies in which they participated:
M. Russell, E.W. Colglazier, and M.R. English, Hazardous Waste Remediation: The Task Ahead;
and E.W. Colglazier, T. Cox, and K. Davis, Estimating Resource Requirements for NPL Sites. Knoxville, University of Tennessee, Waste Management Research and Education Institute, 1991.

41 Ibid., p.39.

42 EPA. OSWER. Survey of NPL Site Managers. January 28,1994.

43 Ibid.

44 Ibid.

45 Ibid.

46 Ibid.

47 EPA. OSWER. Superfund Enforcement Program Highlight8, CERCLIS. 1993. And EPA. Superfund Administrative Reforms Annual Report, Fiscal Year 1996. December 1996. p. xiv.

48 EPA. Office of Congressional and Legislative Affairs. Telephone conversation with Kevin Matthews, January 27, 1997

49 GAO. Superfund: Legal Expenses for Cleanup-Related Activities of Major U.S. Corporations. GAO/RCED-95-46. December 1994 p. 4

50 Ibid., p. 5-6.

51 Ibid., p.11-12.

52 House Committee on Banking, Finance and Urban Mfairs, 1990, as referenced in Business Reundtable, 101 Terms & Facts on Superfund, November 1993.

53 Hembra, Richard. Superfund Pollution Claims. Government Accounting Office (GAO). 1992.

54 Acton, Jan Paul, and Lloyd S. Dixon, p. x-xi.

55 40 CFR 300.435(f). "Operation and Maintenance."

56 Ibid.

57 GAO. Superfund: Operations and Maintenance Activities Will Require Billions of Dollars. GAO/RCED 95-275. September 1995. p.4.

58 Ibid., p.9.

59 Ibid., p.8.

60 Ibid., p.6.

61 Ibid,. p. 4-9.

62 Church, Thomas W. and Robert T. Nakamura. Cleaning Up the Mess:Implementation Stretegies in Superfund. Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution [1993]. p.175.

63 EPA, Technology Innovation Office, 1992, as referenced in Business Reundtable, 101 Terms & Facts on Superfund. November 1993.

64 Kovalick, Walter, Jr. EPA. OSWER. Testimony before the U.S. House Committee on Science, Space and Technolo~, April 1993.

65 EPA. OSWER. Physical State of Waste. Superfund: NPL Site Charoctenzation Project Report. 1991. p.53.