Environmental cleanup program marks 20th anniversary

Undated photo of a contaminated creek near the Love Canal Superfund site

December 7, 2000
Web posted at: 4:10 PM EST (2110 GMT)

In this story: It began with Love Canal Hudson River PCBs Publicker Industries RELATED STORIES, SITES

PHILADELPHIA,Pennsylvania (AP) -- When federal officials began cleaning up an abandoned whiskey distillery in south Philadelphia 13 years ago, they found a noxious stew of hazardous waste: toxic chemicals, explosive gases, PCBs, asbestos.

Last month, the 40-acre site on the banks of the Delaware River was removed from the Environmental Protection Agency's Superfund list of most hazardous toxic waste sites. The cleanup complete, it is now used as a shipping terminal.

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"EPA's efforts actually provided access to a facility that otherwise would be bound by the previous pollution on the site. It unchained potential within the port," said Leo Holt, whose marine transportation company uses the terminal.

EPA officials call the cleanup one of the successes of the Superfund program, created 20 years ago this month, and EPA Administrator Carol Browner, attending ceremonies on Thursday to mark the milestone, lauded the Clinton administration for pumping up the program.

"In the past seven years, Superfund has completed cleanups at three times as many sites as in all the prior years of the program combined," she said.

Congress passed the legislation in 1980 in the wake of the Love Canal toxic waste crisis. The Niagara Falls, N.Y., neighborhood had been built on and around a former chemical dump, and by the 1960s and '70s contaminated groundwater was leaching into back yards and school grounds.

President Carter declared a federal emergency in 1978; schools closed and 7,500 Love Canal residents were relocated.

Love Canal too has become a Superfund success. The cleanup has made habitable the outer rim of the contaminated area, and more than 200 homes there have been built or renovated.

Hundreds of sites have been cleaned, but criticism exists. The Superfund program requires polluters to clean contaminated property even if they no longer operate or own the site, and program critics say it is punitive, slow and wasteful.

Last month, General Electric Co. asked a federal court to declare the Superfund law unconstitutional, calling it a violation of due process. At least three GE sites are part of the Superfund list.

The old GE Hudson Falls capacitor facility along the Hudson River, one of many factories involved in PCB dumping

One of them is a stretch of the Hudson River contaminated by PCBs released by two GE capacitor plants. The EPA recommended Wednesday that the company dredge the river, which could cost $460 million.

A 1999 report from the General Accounting Office, Congress' investigative arm, found that Superfund spent $14 billion but had not completed work at 42 percent of the worst sites.

A recent study of 150 Superfund sites found the agency typically spent hundreds of millions of dollars per cancer case avoided.

"This is an extremely expensive program in terms of cost effectiveness," said Duke University scholar James T. Hamilton, the study's co-author.

Defenders of the program acknowledge some problems but count its successes in eliminating toxic waste.

"The program has gotten a lot better, a lot more efficient, a lot faster at cleaning up sites," said Ed Hopkins of the Sierra Club.

Former New Jersey Gov. Jim Florio, who authored the Superfund law while a congressman, said it has been a "very useful tool across the whole nation to clean up the leaking toxic dump sites."

The Superfund list has included 1,450 sites over the last 20 years. Of those, 229 have been cleaned and removed from the list and another 759 are in various stages of cleanup.

The Publicker Industries site in Philadelphia was operated as a distillery and later as a fuel oil storage facility from 1914 to 1985.

The EPA placed the site on a priority list in 1989 after studies revealed air, soil and groundwater contamination with volatile chemicals and heavy metals. The agency also said highly reactive lab wastes and abandoned gas cylinders posed a threat of fire and explosion. Money from the Superfund program was used to rehabilitate the property.

"When you're looking at a riverfront property in an urban area, to be able to use that for commerce, it's a very good story, rather than having a piece of land sit and lie sallow," EPA spokeswoman Lisa Brown said.

Critics blast Superfund for its reliance on litigation to recover cleanup costs.

Dan Danner, senior vice president of the National Federation of Independent Business, said the law ensnares innocent business owners. Any business that has contributed waste to a toxic landfill, even if the waste is not hazardous, can be forced to defend itself in Superfund litigation.

Copyright 2000 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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National Federation of Independent Business
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