President Trump's budget would cut Superfund toxic cleanup program by 30%

WASHINGTON — When the Trump administration’s preliminary budget came out last month, the news was not good for those living near Wappinger Creek in New York’s Dutchess County, or the former SBA shipyard in Jefferson Parish, La., or the Anaconda aluminum reduction facility in Columbia Falls. Mont.

All three sites were so contaminated with toxic substances and posed such a threat to public health that they were designated last year to be part of Superfund, the federal program designed to clean up the nation’s most environmentally hazardous sites.

But that work may soon get harder.

As part of his initial 2018 budget proposal, President Trump is proposing to slash $330 million out of the nearly $1.1 billion Superfund initiative. That’s a 30% reduction to an Environmental Protection Agency program already struggling to keep pace with a growing inventory of hazardous hot spots that pose dangers to public health and the local environment.

Superfund sites, which include abandoned industrial sites, city landfills and military depots, have been linked to higher cancer risks as well as other diseases.

Cuts in Superfund part of broad domestic cuts

The proposed cut is part of a broad swath of domestic program reductions that would be used to finance a significant boost in military spending and pay for a border wall with Mexico. Most federal agencies would see budget cuts with EPA alone shouldering an across-the-board reduction of 31% under the budget plan.

Administration officials justify the cut to Superfund as a way to rein in administrative costs and improve efficiencies while partnering with states to speed cleanup of sites that in some cases have languished for decades on the National Priority List that tracks Superfund sites.

More than half of the 406 sites placed on the original NPL in 1983 remain on the list. On average, it takes about 19 years for a site to be removed from the list, according to to the Government Accountability Office.

But the head of a trade group that represents state environmental agencies says it’s not that simple.

“Are there inefficiencies in the program? Absolutely. Can you improve it? Sure,” said Alexandra Dapolito Dunn, executive director of the Environmental Council of the States. “But you still need the capital to do the work. Removing administrative inefficiency will only get you so far.”

Superfund program prompted by Love Canal, other disasters

Congress established the Superfund program in 1980 in the wake of several high-profile environmental crises. Notable among them was the Love Canal disaster, a toxic landfill in Niagara Falls, N.Y. where leaking contaminants sickened hundreds of residents and was blamed for a spike in the reported cases of skin rashes, miscarriages, and birth defects.

Such hazardous sites continue to pose a health risk, according to a study released last month by researchers from the University of Missouri School of Medicine and the University of Florida.

The study found the rate of cancer incidence was more than 6% higher in Florida counties with active or delisted Superfund sites than those that never had one.

“These results support the link between toxic environmental waste and adverse health outcomes” said Alexander Kirpich, a University of Florida researcher who co-authored the study. “But more efforts are needed to better understand this link and what it means for residents in these counties.”

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There were 1,337 sites as of March 21. New Jersey has the most with 114, followed by California (98), Pennsylvania (95), New York (85), Michigan (65), Florida (53), and Texas (52). Some smaller states stand out as having a relatively large number of sites including New Hampshire (20), Montana (17) and Delaware (13).

Today, some 53 million Americans — about one of every six — lives within three miles of a Superfund site, according to Mathy Stanislaus, a former associate administrator in the EPA who oversaw the program for the Obama administration.

Sites are placed on the list based on a Hazard Ranking System that factors in risk to human health and the environment posed by uncontrolled toxins. There are two basic forms of cleanup: a remedial action to address long-term contamination at a site such as construction of a landfill cap, and a removal action to deal with immediate threats to human health or the environment, such as the extraction of hazardous materials.

New EPA head calls Superfund 'essential'

Newly installed EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt told a group of mayors who gathered in Washington last month he considered the Superfund program “a priority” and “absolutely essential.” Pruitt said he is placing special emphasis within the agency to address the Superfund backlog by identifying hurdles to faster cleanup.

“Some of those sites have been on the National Priority List for three or four decades,” he told them. “That just shouldn’t be.”

As Oklahoma’s former attorney general, Pruitt sued the EPA 14 times over the legality of various environmental regulations. But he’s been an advocate for cleanup programs such as Superfund and Brownfields, which addresses less toxic sites and also takes a large hit in the Trump budget proposal.

Pruitt’s comments suggest an internal fight between agency officials who support environmental cleanup programs and White House officials looking for ways to fund the president’s priorities without raising taxes. It also means both programs could see smaller cuts when the final budget proposal comes out in May.

An internal budget memo from acting Chief Financial Officer David Bloom shows that some of the cuts within the Superfund program would come from a range of functions within the program, including enforcement, research, planning, and emergency preparedness.

EPA’s Office of Land and Emergency Management, which oversees Superfund, “is encouraged to focus on activities that bring human exposure and groundwater migration under control while scaling back assessment activities, grants to communities, and revisions to existing guidance documents,” the March 21 memo states. ““These resource levels require us to think about the work we do and how we do it, the way we’re organized and the geographic location and spaces we occupy.”

Lawmakers decry Superfund cuts

Many Democratic lawmakers are decrying the cuts to Superfund and vowing to fight them.

Delaware Sen. Tom Carper, the top Democrat on the Environment and Public Works Committee, said a 30% reduction would severely roll back already hamstrung efforts to clean up contaminated Department of Defense sites, which include some of the most toxic and complicated cases.

Such a deep funding cut “will slow or delay cleanups, jeopardizing the health and safety of the people who live and work near these contaminated sites, and irresponsibly abdicate this country’s obligation to remedy the environmental legacy of the Cold War,” Carper said during a hearing on the issue last week.

Some Republicans aren’t happy either.

“The Environmental Protection Agency is an absolutely necessary federal agency and I think some of the large cuts I  don’t think will be sustained by the majority of the House as both Republicans and Democrats vote on the (budget),” said House Appropriations Chairman Rodney Frelinghuysen, R-N.J.

Cleanup of Superfund sites is paid for primarily by the owner of the operation, such as a mine or chemical factory, that has been identified as the polluter.

Toxic sites take years to clean up

But determining the source and scope of culpability often takes years. And it’s common that those ultimately deemed responsible lack the resources to pay for cleanup of sites, many of which are abandoned by bankrupt owners. Even with identifiable culprits, the federal government often has to initiate work on its own — especially in public health emergencies — and then try to recover costs from polluters.

When Congress passed the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA) that kick started Superfund in 1980, it included a tax on oil and chemical companies. That tax expired in 1995 and the Republican-led Congress refused to renew it.

That’s meant that funding for the program has had to compete for general revenue dollars on which most other government agencies depend.

That has meant a decline in buying power over the years, according to the GAO report.

Annual federal appropriations for Superfund declined from about $2 billion to about $1.1 billion in constant 2013 dollars from fiscal years 1999 through 2013, a report from the congressional watchdog agency found.

The decline in funding has had consequences. Over that 15-year period, EPA did not fund about one-third of the new remedial projects in the year in which they were ready to start, according to the GAO.

GOP Rep. Matt Gaetz, whose Florida Panhandle district is home to five active Superfund sites, said he’d like to see states take over the program, provided the federal funding to conduct cleanups comes along with it. Giving states more control would save money and accelerate cleanup, he said.

“We’ve had sites in Northwest Florida that have been designated and then have languished for many years,” said Gaetz, who’s sponsoring a bill to abolish the EPA. “This is hardly a program that’s a model in efficiency and effectiveness.”