Whitman Defends Superfund Cutbacks

Date: March 14, 2002

Source: News Room

EPA Administrator Christine Todd Whitman has defended the Bush administration¹s decision to cut in half the number of polluter-pays cleanups. Whitman said the fewer sites arise from having to spread the same amount of money each year for more costly, more complex and larger sites. At the same time, Congress and the Bush administration have been reluctant to reimpose a Superfund tax on polluters and other businesses. The special tax on the oil and chemical industries and other businesses that process or use toxic substances expired in 1995. Since then, the Superfund trust fund financed by the tax has dwindled from a high of $3.6 billion in 1996 to a projected $28 million at the end of next year. President Bush proposed in the budget he submitted last month that the shrinking trust fund pay $593 million of this year's projected $1.3 billion in cleanup costs for sites where responsible parties either cannot be found or are bankrupt, with the remaining $700 million to come from the Treasury. About 40 Superfund cleanups a year are expected to be completed during the Bush administration; 47 were done last year. More than 80 sites were cleaned up during each of the last four years of the Clinton administration.

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