RACHEL’s Hazardous Waste News #77

=======================Electronic Edition========================

The Superfund program is in trouble. The massive federal program
to clean up old dump sites is costing billions but is not
achieving its goals, according to Dr. Joel Hirschhorn, project
director for a study of Superfund being conducted by the Office
of Technology Assessment (OTA), an arm of the U.S. Congress.

The OTA “SUPERFUND IMPLEMENTATION STUDY” will be released next
month. Dr. Hirschhorn says the goal of the study is “to
understand whether there is a coherent, efficient, and effective
national strategy for cleaning up contaminated sites.” He told
Congress, “We have disturbing information to report…. Large
amounts of money are being spent, and in too many cases little
protection of public health and the environment is being
obtained.”

Superfund is a federal program to clean up old toxic dump sites.
The program is run by EPA (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency).
In 1986 Congress set cleanup goals for the program, embodying
them in the Superfund Amendments and Reauthorization Act (SARA)
which requires “eliminating contamination from soil and
groundwater expeditiously, effectively, permanently, and without
transferring risk from one community to another.”

SARA clearly spelled out that EPA is supposed to use “permanent”
cleanup methods “to the maximum extent practicable.” The law
clearly intended to steer EPA away from its usual practise of
digging up wastes at one leaking landfill and burying them in
another landfill which would eventually begin to leak, a practise
Dr. Hirschhorn calls “a shell game.” SARA was also clearly
intended to prevent the EPA from relying on “containment” of
wastes at existing sites; containment involves digging deep
trenches in the ground around landfills and filling the trenches
with wet clay (so-called “slurry walls”). Containment may also
involve placing a clay cap over a landfill, to act as an umbrella
to keep rain out, to reduce the likelihood that toxic wastes will
be carried off-site by water. Obviously “containment” methods
are not permanent remedies for toxic wastes–they simply put off
the day when off-site contamination will occur, thus passing
today’s problem on to our children.

Dr. Hirschhorn testified that by 1991 more than $10 billion will
have been spent by the Superfund program. However, in 1987
(latest year for which data are available) 42% of remedial
actions approved by EPA involved land disposal and containment,
not permanent cleanup. Incineration-a permanent remedy–was
approved in 19% of cases. Chemical solidification and
stabilization was approved in 10%; however, as Dr. Hirschhorn
told Congress, chemical solidification and stabilization “have
not been proved to detoxify or destroy hazardous substances.”

To request a copy of the forthcoming OTA study, contact Dr.
Hirschhorn at Office of Technology Assessment, U.S. Congress,
Washington, DC 20510-8025; phone (202) 228-6361.
–Peter Montague, Ph.D.

Descriptor terms: sara; studies; findings; epa; joe; hirschhorn;
ota; congress; remedial action; trenches; landfilling;
incineration; solidification; toxicity;

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