Superfund: Case Studies Of Pollution

In this episode, we take a look at the impact of the Superfund Amendments and Reauthorization Act, with a focus on Title III: The Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-know Act, or EPCRA.Revolutionary for its time, the act served to streamline the emergency planning and response process across state and federal agencies, working to better inform cities, towns, and citizens of the public health threats in their communities.With these major statutes in place, the EPA experienced a productive era of reform that began in the late 1980s and continued into the early 2000s. The efficiency of the Superfund program was honed. Cleanup efforts were accelerated. And for the first time, the program saw major successes across the United States.

On this episode, we cover the Ruckelshaus Restoration of the Environmental Protection Agency during the mid-1980s, which featured the reauthorization and strengthening of several major pieces of environmental law. Culminating in that effort was the passage of the Superfund Amendment and Reauthorization Act of 1986, which reauthorized funding for the Superfund program and greatly overhauled its system of cleanup standard and remediation procedures.The act, however, was not without its criticisms and failures, and some aspects of its implementation fell short of expectations. Included in its passage was the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-know Act, which worked to fill the gaps between the federal government and the local communities impacted by toxic waste pollution.

In this episode, we take a look at the first years of the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act of 1980, and its implementation by the Reagan Administration.While several court cases in the early 1980s served to authorize and strengthen the statutes of CERCLA and the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, both regulatory programs experienced major cuts and roll backs under EPA Administrator Anne Gorsuch.Those cuts were but a fraction of ongoing government deregulation and defunding under Reagan. However, following months of congressional hearings, mismanagement of the EPA under Gorsuch became clear, and she, along with several dozen fellow EPA officials resigned, ushering in new leadership who refocused the agency's directives and regulatory enforcement.

In Episode IX, we take a comprehensive look at the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act of 1980, or CERCLA.Going section by section, we break down the basic definitions, the statutes, and the language, and look at how the final bill was the result of more than three years of debate surrounding how best to form a Superfund law.With this firm understanding of CERCLA in place, we'll be able to look closely at how those statutes changed over time, how they were weakened and strengthened, and what their future might look like under an administration intent on dismantling environmental regulations.This presents a solid foundation of information which will help provide a deeper understanding of how pollution is addressed when we begin our survey of individual Superfund sites.

We finish our look at the legislative history of the Comprehensive Emergency Response, Compensation, and Liability Act of 1980.In the midpoint of 1980, the Presidential election was in full stride, and the reelection of President Jimmy Carter looked increasingly doubtful. Feeling the pressure to enact a Superfund law before the end of the year, Congress scrambled to compromise between three legislative proposals moving through committee: Senate Bill 1480, House Resolution 7020 and House Resolution 85.With Carter's loss, and may Superfund proponents voted out of the Senate, those remaining succumbed to the realization that much of their ambition would have to be shed in order to pass legislation that at least began to address America's toxic waste crisis.

In Episode VII, we continue our survey of the legislative history of the Comprehensive Emergency Response, Compensation, and Liability Act of 1980.Moving into 1980, efforts by Congress and the Carter Administration to pass a comprehensive emergency response law to address toxic waste pollution enters a new phase of desperation.Seeing current legislative proposals stall before committee, Representative James Florio of New Jersey introduces House Resolution 7020, a streamlined and modest attempt to identify and remediate abandoned toxic waste sites.While the bill gains traction in the House, the pollution debate and the case for a Superfund program receive a major boost when the nation learns of the devastating contamination that has befell the community of Woburn, Massachusetts.

We continue our survey of the legislative history of the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act of 1980, or CERCLA.By June of 1979, the debate about a potential Superfund law was getting bogged down in committee hearings and congressional debates, with no clear direction of which way to turn.The Carter Administration, in a desperate attempt to get legislation considered, requested the introduction of Senate Bill 1341, the Oil, Hazardous Substances, and Hazardous WasteResponse, Liability, and Compensation Act of 1979.The bill did little to reconcile the interests and requirements of environmentalists, state lawmakers, victims of toxic waste, and the chemical industry, but it sparked an array of other legislation that would eventually be amended and combined to become CERCLA.

We continue our look at the legislative history of Superfund, and how the final bill formed over the course of many years of public debate. Much of this debate took place before the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works and the House Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce. As we'll see, a number of legislative proposals were introduced that tried to balance emergency response mechanisms, victim compensation, strict and joint liability, and what percentage of costs were to be covered by the U.S. Federal Government, the States, and the industry.

In the latest installment, we begin our dive into the legislative history and framework of the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act of 1980, or CERCLA.We conduct a brief survey of some fundamental environmental laws such as the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act and the Solid Waste Disposal Act, which was later amended by the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act.In looking at these laws and what they accomplished, the framework of environmental law comes into view, providing a good reference for the role of CERCLA and how it supplemented or amended these past statutes.

In Episode III, we continue our survey of a brief history of pollution by looking at the string of environmental legislation passed in the United States in the 1960s and 1970s in the lead-up to a number of highly publicized environmental crises that were beginning to grip the nation, including Love Canal.As the general public and lawmakers came to the realization that our landscape was peppered with thousands of abandoned toxic waste sites, they passed the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act of 1980—CERCLA—establishing the Superfund program.Public awareness of the issue led to mobilization of communities in the form of protests, volunteerism, and engagement, which propelled movements of citizen science, environmental justice, and environmental literacy.