Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, August 24, 1995 TAG: 9508240060
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: B8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
The company has spent $20 million capping and isolating the lagoons and ponds used for waste disposal, but the total cleanup of what has become a Superfund toxic waste site has been put at three times that amount.
Under proposals gaining support in Congress to change the Superfund law, Olin and thousands of other corporations would no longer have to clean up pollution they caused. Under some proposals, the government might even have to reimburse private parties for costs already incurred.
``Congress would let Olin Corp. walk away and transfer the cost of cleaning up this site to the taxpayer,'' said Steven Herman, head of enforcement at the Environmental Protection Agency.
Like most Superfund projects, the Saltville site in Southwest Virginia has been full of controversy, mostly disagreement over how to correct the damage from the dumping that ended in the 1970s.
The question of whether private companies responsible for pollution decades ago should be required to clean up the messes - often when liability is in dispute - has become a focus of intense debate as Congress tries to rewrite the controversial 1980 law.
The Clinton administration agrees there are many things that need to be corrected to make the law more equitable and efficient. But EPA Administrator Carol Browner said, ``Those who caused the problem should have the responsibility to clean up the problem.''
Freeing them from it could result in higher taxes or, more likely, a rollback in cleanup work, said Browner and others who oppose such changes. Others argue that under Superfund, the issue is not over polluters paying or not paying but about fairness.
```Polluter pays' is really just a myth, a useful sound bite that doesn't square with common sense and fair play,'' maintained Candace Sutcliffe, a vice president of Liberty Mutual Insurance Co.
Insurers stand to gain billions of dollars if private companies are relieved of cleanup costs. Last year, as part of a bill that nearly passed the Democratic-controlled Congress, the insurance industry offered to pay $800 million a year into a special liability fund for Superfund cases. With the Republican-led Congress talking about getting rid of private-sector liability, that offer is no longer on the table.
Instead, the insurance industry is working to get Congress to scrap ``retroactive liability'' - a core part of the law that says those responsible for pollution before 1980 still must clean it up.
``Repealing retroactive liability would result in an enormous financial windfall for insurers,'' said Bernard Reilly, corporate counsel for DuPont Co.
Chemical and other industries in the Superfund web also would gain, according to the EPA and congressional investigators. For example:
In California, Lockheed Martin Corp. would be free of tens of millions of dollars in cleanup costs because of ground water contamination in the San Fernando Valley.
The government would be unable to recover up to $200 million in costs from Occidental Chemical Co., the successor of Hooker Chemical Co., the company responsible for the Love Canal dumping in New York.
Critics of the law argue that often those having to pay were not responsible for the pollution directly, or acted within the law of the period.
According to the Congressional Budget Office, about 70 percent of all Superfund sites involve pollution created before the law was passed. Studies estimate that between 50 percent and 90 percent of the sites involve waste that was deposited legally.
Smith has proposed exempting any companies whose pollution occurred before 1980. Legislation being crafted in the House would end liability before 1987, which would exempt 95 percent of sites, according to the CBO analysis.
But who would pay for cleaning up the more than 1,200 sites on the EPA's cleanup priority list? Critics of the proposed changes fear Superfund will become a public work program paid for by the taxpayers.
``There is no other way to finance it without making those responsible for the pollution pay for it,'' said Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., the ranking Democrat on the subcommittee on Superfund.
This year the EPA is spending $1.5 billion on Superfund, most of it coming from a special tax on chemical and petroleum companies. Lifting most private-sector liability could nearly double the cost to the agency, according to the CBO study.
by CNB