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On Capitol Hill, self-proclaimed reformers often produce cures worse than the ailment. So it was 15 years ago, when lawmakers examined the sluggish Superfund program and prescribed the harshest of remedies - slow but steady starvation.
The new Republican-dominated Congress, eager to follow up on its vow to rein in government inefficiency and overreach, chose not to renew a special tax imposed in 1980 on a small group of industries prone to pollution.
Killing the tax sidestepped the real need - how to speed the process of cleaning up polluted sites and how to hold down costs. But the decision did please many executives in the oil and chemical industries who'd complained that the levy was onerous and unfair.
Not surprisingly, starving the Superfund program has proven costly for taxpayers, the environment and the people who live and work near contaminated sites.
The Superfund tax was intended to generate a steady stream of revenue for cleanups. The primary targets were properties that were abandoned, or "orphaned," by companies that had long ago faded from - or fled - the scene. The fund also was tapped when it was too difficult and too costly to determine which company in a long chain of owners was responsible for the pollution.
In Hampton Roads, Superfund is a familiar presence. The Environmental Protection Agency, for instance, used it toclean up dioxin and other waste in a lumberyard in the Suffolk hamlet of Chuckatuck. Other properties, in Portsmouth and elsewhere, are on the national priority list or have been considered for inclusion.
But the Superfund program ran out of money seven years ago. Since then, the federal government has used tax dollars to chip away at the list. The pace of cleanups has slowed dramatically. Last year, the EPA worked on 19 sites. That's down from 89 a decade earlier.
Close to 1,300 sites remain on the list, and 606 of those are orphaned.
Congress is considering legislation that would revive the Superfund tax and shift the burden off taxpayers and back onto polluting industries. The White House supports the measure.
In a perfect world, companies guilty of polluting would be held responsible every time for cleaning up their own messes. But that's not always possible, as industry officials well know.
Reviving the tax - generally, 9.7 cents per barrel of crude or refined oil and up to $4.87 per ton of hazardous chemicals - is the most logical way to make progress on the existing list and deal with future problems.
If affected industries have a genuine alternative, they're welcome to suggest it. But a warning to the "reform"-minded: Dumping the mess on taxpayers doesn't qualify.
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Just Another Example of a Worthless Govt Agency...
If the EPA had the "experts" they said they had, these cleanups would happen.The Elizabeth River Project is well on the way of cleaning up Money Point (started in 2004)for about $11 million. Notice "well on the way." Whereas, the EPA has spent over $20 million (>15 years)on Atlantic Wood just on investigation and their solution is so hairbrained nobody will agree to it! Too bad this is just one example of huge money pits draining our tax dollars. Don't complain and get political about real problems, i.e. BP Gulf spill, there's not much we can do but pour millions into it. However, call, write, e-mail, text, twitter, and facebook your congressperson and beg them to curtail the EPA spending more then their almost $300 million budget on never ending investigations. Maybe then we could get EPA "experts" that have actually know a tiny bit about their field. That's right we have college grads in biology telling 30 year groundwater professionals how to clean up a groundwater problem! Get a phd in chemistry to fix your car!
So, your solution is
to tax all members of a class of businesses, the guilty and the innocent alike, and thus to allow the guilty to impose the costs of their cleanup on those companies who paid the upfront costs of operating cleanly in the first place?
You understand that creates an incentive to skip the costs of operating as cleanly as possible, knowing your competitors are going to have to pay as much as you do for your pollution.
Would it not make more sense to fund cleanups from the proceeds of fines for current pollution violations, charging enough to clean up the current messes plus some extra for cleaning up orphaned sites?
"incentive to skip the costs of operating cleanly as possible"
Polluters can be sued for polluting. That too acts as an incentive to operate cleanly. Of course the GOP, Libertarians, and Teaple do big bidnesses' bidding by pushing for damage caps ("Republicans Block Bid To Raise Oil-Spill-Damages Limit") or allow companies to skirt liabilities completely.
Frankly, after months of professed JohnGalt love by GOPTeaple, i'm surprised there's even a need to clean up after these Galtian corporate patriots. I thought we were supposed to get out of their way and let them do the right thing which they are predeposed to do anywho.
Show me
Show me where Libertarians have supported a damage cap for pollution.
One of the reasons Libertarians have trouble raising money to run for office is that we WILL NOT support such caps on actual damages. We support allowing business freedom but we also support holding them responsible for costs they impose on others. That is the whole point of addressing externalties through the courts as an alternative to intrusive regulation.
Democrats and Republicans passed those protections for their corporate donors, not us.
Libertarians and the BP Spill
Rand Paul: criticizing BP is "unamerican" "accidents happen"
Ron Paul: compensation fund a PR stunt
Sharron Angle: compensation fund a "slush fund"
Cleanups under Superfund are for the "worst of the worst" and can cost billions of dollars and take decades to complete. The Superfund is used to pay for the cleanup when the businesses responsible cannot be identified, no longer exist, or refuse to acknowledge their responsibility so the Fed cleans up first and seeks compensation later. Are you saying we should add a "premium" of billions of dollars to the environmental fine imposed on Company A to pay for the cleanup caused by Company B rather than have all industries contribute?
no and yes
None of the Libertarians you referred to said BP should not make whole all those injured, and the compensation fund IS a politically motivated shakedown. Right now, checks to hundreds of fishermen who were due payments Wednesday are being held up by the transition from direct payments from BP to the bureaucratic slush fund.
And, yes, the cost of superfund cleanup should fall on polluters, and not on those businesses that paid the extra, upfront costs of preventing pollution.
Those industries who go the extra mile to protect the environment should not be penalized by paying the same costs as those who allow pollution.
The reality is the Oil Industry will set a profit margin
then raise prices at the pump to pay for the clean up and protect that margin.
It really is that simple.
Maybe...
The editor should do a little research as to why the cleanup is not progressing in the gulf. A good starting point would be the article by Paul Rubin in the Wall Street Journal "Why Is the Gulf Cleanup So Slow?" Maybe, possible, it is the government inaction, regulation and stonewalling that is the problem?
And some people already realize that the cleanup...
... is problematic in that the gusher continues to gush unabated. So regardless of the number of bags of oily sand one bags, lots more oil is on the way. And some people realize that booming is basically ineffectual. And the gusher continues to gush unabated.....