Narrative Summary: Superfund

For every natural progression, there is always inevitable negative factors that occur as a byproduct of the result. The technological advancements such as factories and mines that are used to further modern society's advancement comes at the cost of polluting the surrounding ecological systems.

A federal program called Superfund has paid for the cleanup of many of these toxic sites. Yet, the fund is bankrupt and the number of sites that have been cleaned up has constantly declined for the last three years.

Superfund began in 1980 as a result of a protest in western New York. The existing problem with Onondaga Lake illustrates that much still needs to be done with New York, not to mention the other 1000 plus sites around the United States.

The original idea of Superfund was to make the polluter pay. There are a number of things that are intrinsically wrong with that philosophy. The wording of the law calls for "joint and several liability" meaning that any party to have an affiliation with the site can be sued to made pay, which is exactly what is happening. Superfund targets the chief polluter, ususally a big deep-pocketed corporation. Then, the deep pockets of the corporation enable it to track down any other companies that had been on the site. The major corporation then sues the little company causing a logjam in court, and no one paying for cleanup of a site.

The law needs to be overhauled, and be more specific in its methodology of prosecuting firms that contributed to the waste. It is a tricky problem because it would have to be passed by Congress. Not only would this take forever, but the corporate interests that dictate congressional policy would most likely not even pass a new Superfund bill.

ARTICLE ABOUT THE ATTEMPTED CLEAN-UP OF ONONDAGA LAKE
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