[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 177 (Thursday, November 9, 1995)]
[House]
[Page H12066]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[[Page H 12066]]


   COMMERCE SUBCOMMITTEE LEGISLATION WILL UNDERMINE SUPERFUND PROGRAM

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from New Jersey [Mr. Pallone] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, I wanted to spend 5 minutes today talking 
about what happened in the Commerce Subcommittee today with regard to 
the Superfund Program. I was very disturbed by the legislation that has 
been introduced by the Republican leadership yesterday in markup of the 
bill, and also today in marking up the bill. Myself and many of the 
other Democrats on the committee tried to make correcting amendments to 
the legislation because of the negative impact that we feel the 
legislation will have on the Superfund Program.
  I do not have to tell my colleagues that not only in New Jersey but 
throughout the Nation a major effort has been made over the last few 
years in trying to clean up hazardous waste sites because of the 
Federal program we know as Superfund. Now, it is, of course, true that 
the program has not worked perfectly, and that while many sites have 
been cleaned up and many others are in the process of being cleaned up 
that there are still a lot more that need to cleaned up. But this is 
not the time for us to backtrack on the Superfund Program. This is the 
time when we reauthorize this legislation to make it better, not to 
make it worse, not to undermine the basic underpinnings of the program.
  Mr. Speaker, I feel strongly that the legislation that came out of 
our subcommittee today would significantly undermine the Superfund 
Program. Let me just give my colleagues some examples.
  The legislation says that over the next few years only 125 new 
Superfund sites can be added to the national priority list. The fact 
that there would be a cap on the number of Superfund sites unrelated to 
any scientific analysis is in itself shameful, and during the debate 
over a proposed amendment to eliminate that cap it was abundantly 
clear, in my opinion, that the Republican leadership felt strongly that 
the Superfund Program really should be phased out; that they were 
trying to cap the program with the hope that over the next few years 
the program would be phased out and responsibility for the cleanup of 
hazardous waste sites would go back to the States.
  Unfortunately, Mr. Speaker, what they failed to point out is that 
most States are not in a position to pay to clean up hazardous waste 
sites, particularly the most severely polluted. My home State of New 
Jersey is a case in point. We have over 6,000 hazardous waste sites 
that need to be cleaned up and only about 114 of them, I believe, are 
on the national priority list under Superfund.

                              {time}  1745

  We do not have the money, and there is no way that we can raise the 
money to clean up all those sites. We need help. We need help from the 
Federal Government. I would point out that the money that is used on 
the Federal level to pay for the Superfund cleanup comes from those who 
generate the pollution, comes from a tax on various companies.
  Mr. Speaker, the other thing that is in this legislation that we 
tried to correct today was the idea of retroactive liability. There is, 
in the bill, in the Republican leadership bill, a provision that gives 
discounts, in other words rebates, back to those companies that have 
cleaned up sites, because they were liable in the past for having 
polluted the Superfund sites. We had an amendment, which I sponsored, 
which would have eliminated those rebates which says the polluter has 
to pay.
  The basic tenet of the Superfund Program is that the polluters pay 
for the cleanup, not the taxpayers. If we are to undermine that concept 
and say now we are going to pay the polluters in certain circumstances 
because of liability that occurred in the past, that undermines the 
whole concept of the Superfund Program that the polluter pays.
  Also, this new legislation would no longer provide a preference for 
permanent treatment of hazardous material at Superfund sites, so that 
instead of requiring the Environmental Protection Agency to go in and 
permanently treat the material so that the site is cleaned, instead we 
would see fences put up, material perhaps carted away. but no effort to 
necessarily do anything permanently to clean up the site.
  Mr. Speaker, I think that is the wrong way to go about the Superfund 
Program. The idea of the Superfund Program was that there was going to 
be cleanup that was real and that the sites could be reused again.
  There are an incredible number of exemptions for liability and 
efforts to take out various types of hazardous materials in this 
legislation that essentially will make for a much weaker Superfund 
bill.
  Mr. Speaker, I would hope that over the next few weeks, as this bill 
moves through not only the Committee on Commerce but other committees 
and eventually to the floor, that we could get more and more support 
for the idea that this reauthorization of Superfund should be done in a 
way that improves the program rather than gutting it.

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