...
M
EDITORIAL Hazardous waste cleanup: who pays? “The most significant environmental health problem of this decade,” is the way Congressman Albert Gore, Jr. (D, Tenn.) describes the hazardous waste disposal problem. Political hyperbole? Certainly not to the 200 families from Love Canal near Niagara Falls, N.Y., who were evacuated from their homes when long-buried toxic chemical wastes came bubbling to the surface and into their basements. Certainly not to those families whose members experienced higher rates of birth defects, miscarriages, mental retardation and blood disorders than would normally be expected in so small a population. The medical dysfunctions found among the families living on the canal landfill, formerly the dump site for Hooker Chemical and Plastics Corp., are attributed to nearly 100 highly toxic chemicals, including a dozen known carcinogens. These toxic wastes erupted from their 55-gal-drum coffins, spread with the rising water table, and so polluted the community that President Carter declared it a disaster area, eligible for emergency disaster relief assistance. T h e Love Canal families are not alone in not considering Gore’s remark an exaggeration. The EPA is now investigating 135 d u m p sites which it considers “actual or potential imminent hazards.” Families living on or near these sites have cause for concern. The callous and careless mistakes of the past have to be corrected. Future Love Canals must be prevented by instituting strict and enforceable waste disposal regulations. But correction, regulation and enforcement cost money. Who pays the costs of containment and cleanup of hazardous wastes in abandoned, inactive and active dump sites, now estimated by EPA a t $50 billion? The generators of the wastes? T h e operators of the dumps and landfills? State and/or federal governments? The U.S. taxpayers, consumers of those goods which required the generation of the toxic materials in the first place? T h e Carter administration says that the federal government, and industries generating the wastes should pay the cleanup costs. Toward this end, recently proposed legislation-designed to plug a loophole in the Resource Conservation & Recovery Act-authorizes $1.6 billion i n appropriations and generator fees over a four-year period: $250 million the first year, and $500 million the fourth year. Industry fees would contribute 80% to this fund, which also covers oil-spill cleanup.
T h e administration bill also provides for 100% federal assistance under emergency conditions up to $300 000, but permits no third-party damages; authoriies funds for one year of Containment, with states sharing the costs above $200 000; and provides for a cost-recovery mechanism whenever the waste generator can be found. Unfortunately under the administration’s scheme, companies which have not disposed of their wastes in a reckless manner in the past are now penalized for the careless practices of some companies that did. Congressman Bob Eckhardt (D, Tex.), whose Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigation has been looking into the hazardous wastc disposal problem, suggests an alternative, forward-looking scheme. Eckhardt would have Congress appropriate funds for containment and cleanup of all abandoned or inactive sites, which are now known hazards. However, he envisions industry contributing a general, uniform fee to a contingency kitty from which funds could be withdrawn to rectify problems that crop up in the future. This fee, of course, would be passed along to the consumer in the form of higher prices on finished goods. His proposal also incorporates a recovery mechanism which would, when possible, recoup from the waste generator the costs of cleanup projects. Eckhardt’s scheme, which may yet develop into legislation, has been well received. EPA administrator Douglas Costle acknowledges its merits. So does Hugh Kaufman, EPA program manager for hazardous assessment, but with two stipulations: One, that any law written would provide that the EPA administrator Ahall, not rwaji, go to court to recoup cleanup costs; and two, that “the public doesn’t lose the right to sue any company that is poisoning it.” N o matter which scheme is adopted, the taxpayer will end up paying for waste disposal mistakes, either through general revenues or higher prices on consumer goods. Perhaps this is only fair. After all, it is the public’s demand-artifically created or not-for frivolous products that generates the mounds of hazardous wastes in the first place.
Volume 13, Number 7,July 1979
769
