responsibilities
The circumstances at Love Canal and the activism of the LCHA, pushed the Federal Government to act. On December 11, 1980, Congress passed the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act, or CERCLA.
CERCLA established laws regulating closed and abandoned hazardous waste sites. It established who was liable (legally responsible) for hazardous waste releases and their cleanup. In doing so, it identified four classes of Potential Responsible Parties (PRPs) that might be liable for contamination at a toxic waste site, at left.
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Personal interview with Professor Alex Klass, Environmental Law Professor at the University of Minnesota, May 11, 2014
"Under Superfund, joint and several liability means that companies can be held accountable and responsible for the cleanup of an entire waste site, even if their contribution was only a fraction of the total. Furthermore, actions that were legal at the time they took place are now viewed as criminal."
-Robert M. Cox Jr, Property and Environment Research Center, 2003
Personal interview with Professor Alex Klass, Environmental Law Professor at the University of Minnesota, May 11, 2014
The PRPs are usually responsible for 70% of the cleanup costs. CERCLA also established a trust fund, "Superfund," to pay for "orphan" sites' cleanup, where no responsible party was established.
Superfund was exhausted in 2003. Congress has continued to pay for the clean up of orphan sites out of general revenues. The moniker "Superfund" has remained as a label for the collective public effort (and implied responsibility) to deal with orphan sites. |
Personal interview with Professor Alex Klass, Environmental Law Professor at the University of Minnesota, May 11, 2014
SARA (Superfund Amendments and Reauthorization Act) was passed by Congress on October 18, 1986. It established stricter liability for PRPs at hazardous waste sites, increased state and local participation in remediation decisions, and increased the size of Superfund to $8.5 billion.
"What we frankly thought was that it was so onerous that potentially responsible parties would rush to the EPA, settle, and put their liability behind them. The reality is that we created a system that is incapable. We created a program designed to fail. People do not come forward, they do not cash in. They lie in the weeds."
-Dennis Eckart, former Ohio Democratic congressman