[Congressional Record Volume 157, Number 56 (Friday, April 15, 2011)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E761]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




             INTRODUCTION OF THE SUPERFUND REINVESTMENT ACT

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                          HON. EARL BLUMENAUER

                               of oregon

                    in the house of representatives

                         Friday, April 15, 2011

  Mr. BLUMENAUER. Mr. Speaker, today, I am pleased to introduce the 
``Superfund Reinvestment Act'' along with my colleagues Rep. Frank 
Pallone and Timothy Bishop. This legislation will provide resources to 
communities across the country to clean up hazardous waste sites and at 
the same time will save taxpayers more than $20 billion over 10 years.
  The Superfund program was enacted in 1980 to provide money to clean 
up toxic waste sites where the responsible party was out of business or 
could not be identified. Before they expired in 1995, the money for 
Superfund cleanup came from taxes on the polluters themselves. However, 
Congress has never reauthorized the tax, making the burden of funding 
cleanups of toxic waste sites fall on the shoulders of taxpaying 
Americans. It is time to make public health, not protection for 
polluters, a priority.
  This legislation will simply reinstate the Superfund taxes to their 
previous levels. This includes excise taxes of 9.7 cents per barrel on 
crude oil or refined oil products, excise taxes of $0.22 to $4.87 per 
ton on certain chemicals, and a corporate income tax of 0.12 percent on 
the amount of a corporation's modified alternative minimum taxable 
income that exceeds $2 million. The President's FY 2012 budget, which 
calls for reauthorization of these taxes, estimates that these fees 
would raise about $2 billion per year and $20.8 billion over 10 years.
  Superfund sites are some of the most contaminated in the nation. 70 
million Americans--including 10 million children, live within four 
miles of a Superfund site. They are exposed to toxic waste such as 
arsenic, benzene, PCBs, mercury and a range of solvents, leading to 
health problems such as infertility, low birth weight, birth defects, 
leukemia and respiratory difficulties. Communities home to these sites 
can face restrictions on water use and recreational activities as well 
as economic losses as property values decline due to contaminated land.
  My community of Portland, Oregon, has been struggling to clean up one 
of the nation's most complex Superfund sites, the Portland Harbor site 
on the Willamette River. I hope that this bill to reinvest in the 
Superfund program will provide additional resources to the 
Environmental Protection Agency to keep the cleanup on track.

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