The National Superfund Crisis

Neglected Superfund toxic-waste sites aren't a threat only for the Hometown area: A new report from the Center for Progressive Regulation warns that the sites are a serious problem nationwide:

Superfund's plight threatens public health across the country. One in four Americans live within three miles of a Superfund site, and approximately three to four million children, who face developmental risks from exposure to environmental contaminants, live within one mile.

Over the last decade, cleanups have slowed to a crawl because the program lost its stable "polluter pays" funding base in 1995. A series of Republican-controlled Congresses allowed the industry taxes that support the program to expire and ignored yearly requests by the Clinton administration to reinstate them.

When President George W. Bush took office, the principle that polluters need not pay went from de facto to official public policy. The largest beneficiaries of this policy are oil and petrochemical companies whose record profits and outsized CEO compensation packages are front-page news nationwide. ... In addition to the "pain at the pump" caused by high gas prices, the American people are hurting from tax policy that places the interests of wealthy corporations over public health.

The report profiles 50 sites. Although none of them are in the Hometown area, the problems plaguing them are similar. Consider the following passage, which could very well be describing the McAdoo Associates Superfund site just north of Hometown and the Still Creek community:

"At many Superfund sites, cosmetic changes have been made—rusting barrels have been removed from the surface, and vegetation has reemerged on what were moonscapes 20 years ago. Beneath the surface, though, the toxic stews continue to circulate, moldering and spreading, adding chemicals to aquifers, rising to the surface of the soil as the land freezes and thaws, and releasing methane and other volatile gases."

To download a copy of "The Toll of Superfund Neglect: Toxic Waste and Communities at Risk," click here.