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In my own state of California, we see monuments to Superfund all around us. Public officials in Oakland have complained to me that fear of toxic liability is holding up redevelopment
of the city’s downtown area. That’s because under Superfund rules, the purchaser of a property is liable for cleanup costs of any hazardous wastes that may be found there. And once imposed, liability for waste cleanup is open-ended; costs typically run to more than $30 million per site.
The result, of course, is to discourage investment in industrial cities. Business executives tell me it is much less risky to develop property in pristine exurban areas that have not been industrialized.
Such disincentives make no environmental sense. Indeed, the cumbersome and litigious Superfund process-ofyen involving hundreds of liable parties--can stall cleanup efforts for months or years. This has prompted that state of California to ask the EPA not to list certain sites on its Superfund priority list. Take, for example, the Mare Island Naval Station, scheduled for closures in 1996, which has a problem with hazardous wastes, Cal/EPA has decided the best way to convert the base to commercial use is by circumventing the Superfund process.
There are several steps that could be taken to reform the Superfund program and begin to take lawyers out of the process, including:
• Repeal retroactive liability. For actions taken before Superfund passed, Congress should calculate the cost of cleanup and allocate it among those who benefit from it— whether all of us or specific sectors of industry-and not pin it on whoever happens to be the current owner.
• Differentiate between polluters and cleanup contractors. The Super
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