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By JAMES M.STROCK California Secretary for Environmental Protection
Superfund, the federal program to clean up the nation’s toxic waste sites, has becomes the environmental equivalent of the Defense Department’s $600 toilet seat.
The aim is worthy enough: to clean up hazardous wastes left buried in the ground, which leach into groundwater and threaten homes -and neighborhoods. But after more than a dozen years and nearly $30 billion, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) concedes cleanup has been completed at fewer than „ 200 of the 2,000 sites that pose the "greatest threat to public health. The eventual cost is estimated at between $100 billion to $700 billion. How can this be?
A recent Rand Corporation report found that nearly one-third of the money spent at studied sites has gone to “transaction costs”--bureaucratic jargon for lawyer and consultant fees. That’s because Superfund embraces a nightmarish definition of liability. For one thing, it is retroactive, meaning individuals or companies are now held liable for activity that was legal when it occurred.
Secondly, the definition is wildly expansive. People who briefly owned property that eariler .had become contaminated may be liable; municipalities may be liable for arranging for the transportation of hazardous wastes, even if required by law to do so;^nd those who sell scrap metal to recyclers may become liable for spills at the recycler’s plant, if the sellers knew the recycling process would include spillage.
This malleable definition of liability has hit the insurance industry with huge litigation costs. Hardly any business escapes the liability noose: old-time manufacturers in industries such as' printing, paints, auto parts or aviation; modern industries, such as computer-chip producers; and small businesses, such as dry cleaners (which can watch their lines of credit vaporize overnight if they become potentially liable in a suit).
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