[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 165 (Tuesday, October 24, 1995)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E2001]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



[[Page E 2001]]


                 SMALL BUSINESS REMEDIATION ACT OF 1995

                                 ______


                            HON. JOE BARTON

                                of texas

                    in the house of representatives

                        Tuesday, October 24, 1995

  Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, the environmental legislation that 
I am introducing today, the Small Business Remediation Act of 1995, is 
designed to ensure that small businesses and landowners will not be 
subjected to unreasonable remediation liability for drycleaning fluids. 
The intent of this bill is to strike a balance between adequate 
environmental protection and the avoidance of needlessly costly 
remediation not justified by human health exposure.
  To fill the void in EPA's cleanup standards for the drycleaning fluid 
perchlorethylene (perc), the proposed legislation uses an extrapolation 
from another Federal agency, the Occupational Safety and Health 
Administration [OSHA], which already has a standard covering an 
estimated 99.9 percent of all exposure to perc. This is a rigorous 
standard required by law to adequately protect workers from harmful 
effects of a chemical, even if they are exposed 8 hours a day, 40 hours 
a week, for their entire working lives. Recognizing the difference 
between workplace and environmental standards such as the ``healthy 
worker'' effect and the potential exposure in the environment of 24 
rather than 8 hours a day, the bill sets a safety margin or an entire 
order of magnitude. That is, the exposure standard for remediation in 
this bill 10 times stricter than OSHA allows for an entire working 
lifetime. If OSHA even lowers its standard, the remediation standard 
set in this bill will follow accordingly.
  The bill seeks to address the real risks from perc exposure. It seeks 
to change the well-intentioned, hopefully apocryphal, process in which 
standards are selected to protect children even from eating tons of 
dirt for 70 years. Instead, an independent government scientific body 
will simply determine the equivalent exposure the general public faces, 
using realistic exposure and absorption assumptions. That information, 
plus the OSHA standard, will be used to calculate the proper amount of 
remediation necessary. Importantly, the bill protects all people from 
real human exposure by explicitly declaring it does not change existing 
Federal standards under the Safe Drinking Water Act.

  While this bill does not specifically address third-party liability, 
it should remove all or most of that threat. If remediation is not 
necessary, except in the case of significant human exposure, and there 
is a congressional finding based on OSHA standards and the calculations 
of the National Institutes of Health that any health risks are small, 
it is difficult to see how there could be serious litigation, either 
under the environmental statutes or the common law.
  I believe this bill is consistent with the Superfund reform 
legislation introduced last week and other regulatory reform 
legislation which seeks to relate environmental costs to real benefits. 
By doing so, the bill will benefit not only the tens of thousands of 
small drycleaners and their employees but also shopping mall owners, 
insurance companies, banks, and consumers. They will be free from the 
fear of crushing liability from an ordered remediation that could cost 
them a lifetime of savings, merely for such pointless requirements as 
cleaning up soil behind a shopping center to arbitrary pristine levels.
  I look forward to working with my colleagues to pass this important 
bill.

                                H.R. --

     SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.

       This Act may be cited as the ``Small Business Remediation 
     Act of 1995''.

     SEC. 2. FINDINGS AND INTENT OF CONGRESS.

       (a) The Congress declares that the public should be 
     protected from the risk of waste or spilled solvents and 
     other chemicals in the soil, surface water, groundwater, and 
     other environmental media.
       (b) The Congress finds that the remediation requirements 
     for spilled or waste chemical substances are often 
     inconsistent, conflicting, and may impose a burden that bears 
     little relationship to the potential harm to the environment 
     and that these requirements pose a special burden on small 
     businesses and landowners.
       (c) Congress intends that standards shall be set for 
     remediation that, with an adequate margin of safety, will 
     protect public health from significant risk from these 
     chemicals and below which level remediation will be permitted 
     but not required.
       (d) Congress resolves that to implement these conclusions a 
     maximum level of remediation in soil, surface water, 
     groundwater, and other environmental media shall be set, 
     initially, for solvents for the dry cleaning industry.

     SEC. 3. STANDARD FOR CLEAN-UP.

       The maximum level of remediation of dry cleaning solvents 
     in soil, surface water, groundwater, and other environmental 
     media that a Federal, State, local agency, or court may 
     require of a person engaged in dry cleaning or the owner of 
     land or a facility in which such a person is conducting dry 
     cleaning shall be one-tenth the equivalent exposure of the 
     workplace standard for such solvents established by the 
     Secretary of Labor under the Occupational Safety and Health 
     Act of 1970.

     SEC. 4. CALCULATION OF EQUIVALENT EXPOSURE

       (a) In consultation with the Administrators of the 
     Occupational Safety and Health Administration and the 
     Environmental Protection Agency, the National Institute of 
     Environmental Health Sciences shall, within 6 months of the 
     date of the enactment of this Act, publish in the Federal 
     Register its computation, based on realistic scientific 
     assumptions, of equivalent exposure by ingestion, inhalation, 
     and absorption indices for the general public, for soil, 
     surface water, groundwater, and other environmental media in 
     nonoccupational circumstances.
       (b) The equivalent exposure shall be calculated from the 
     workplace standard for dry cleaning solvents which assures on 
     the basis of the best available evidence that no employee 
     will suffer material impairment of health or functional 
     capacity even if such employee has regular exposure for the 
     employee's entire working lifetime.

     SEC. 5. AUTHORIZATION TO REMEDIATE AT A LOWER LEVEL THAN THE 
                   MAXIMUM LEVEL OF REMEDIATION.

       Nothing in this Act--
       (1) shall preempt or otherwise prevent a Federal, State, or 
     local government or private party from remediating soil, 
     surface water, groundwater, or other environmental media to a 
     lower level than the maximum level of remediation at its own 
     cost and expense, or
       (2) shall alter or affect the Federal drinking water 
     standards under title XIV of the Public Health Service Act.

     SEC. 6. DEFINITIONS.

       For purposes of this Act:
       (1) The term ``other environmental media'' means air and 
     organic and inorganic material.
       (2) The term ``equivalent exposure'' means the amount of a 
     chemical substance found in air, surface water, groundwater, 
     and other environmental media which is equivalent, under 
     general and realistic conditions of human exposure, 
     absorption, and toxicity, to that of the workplace standard 
     for that substance.
       (3) The term ``maximum level of remediation'' means one-
     tenth the equivalent exposure and is deemed fully protective 
     of human health.
       (4) The term ``workplace standard for dry cleaning 
     solvents'' means the standard established by the Secretary of 
     Labor under section 6(b)(5) of the Occupational Safety and 
     Health Act of 1970 as the time-weighted average and set forth 
     in section 1810.1000 Z-2 of title 29 of the Code of Federal 
     Regulations.

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