Volume 141, No. 137 covering the 1st Session of the 104th Congress (1995 - 1996) was published by the Congressional Record.
The Congressional Record is a unique source of public documentation. It started in 1873, documenting nearly all the major and minor policies being discussed and debated.
“SMALL BUSINESS AND SUPERFUND REFORM” mentioning the Environmental Protection Agency was published in the Senate section on pages S12678-S12679 on Sept. 6, 1995.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
SMALL BUSINESS AND SUPERFUND REFORM
Mr. PRESSLER. Mr. President, I wanted to bring to my colleagues' attention the concerns of several prominent South Dakotans regarding the Superfund Program.
Like many of my colleagues, during the August recess, I spend considerable time back in South Dakota talking to my constituents. While in South Dakota, one issue came up on a number of occasions: Superfund reform. This issue is important to small business men and women throughout South Dakota. In fact, several South Dakota small business leaders just launched a new coalition, South Dakotans for Superfund reform. Recently, the coalition leadership's comments on Superfund, and an op-ed from Rob Wheeler of Lemmon, SD, were published in local newspapers in the State. I ask that these articles be printed in the Record at the conclusion of my remarks.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
(See exhibit 1.)
Mr. PRESSLER. We all agree that the current Superfund Program does not work. It is one of the most expensive environmental programs on the books. Despite the vast amounts of taxpayer dollars that are poured into the Superfund, the program has a very low success rate. One of the prime causes of this low success rate is a confusing and costly liability system. This system is unfair to small businesses and encourages excessive and costly litigation.
I am encouraged by the draft proposal drawn up by my esteemed colleague from New Hampshire, Senator Smith. As chairman of the Superfund, Waste Control, and Risk Management Subcommittee, he has assumed the daunting task of rewriting the existing Superfund law. I look forward to working with him to create a new Superfund law based on fairness and common sense. We should not insist on a system that calls on small businesses that complied with past laws and regulations to shoulder the burden of cleaning up our hazardous waste sites.
I believe these newspaper articles represent not only the concerns of South Dakota small business leaders, but of all small business men and women across the country. They are the innovators who collectively make our economic engine run. For that reason, we must take these concerns to heart as we reexamine the Superfund Program.
Exhibit 1
Message to Clinton Clear--Reform Superfund Program
(By Rob L. Wheeler)
I attended the White House Conference on Small Business in June--one of about 2,000 entrepreneurs and business owners from across the country invited to Washington by the Clinton administration.
At the end of the four-day event, the White House asked us to put together a list of the most important steps the federal government could take to really help small businesses. One of the top recommendations may come as a surprise: overhauling the Superfund program.
Superfund was created by Congress in 1980 to clean up the nation's worst hazardous waste dumps. Fifteen years have passed since then and more than 1,300 Superfund sites have been identified by the Environmental Protection Agency. Over
$20 billion in government and private sector funds has been spent. But only 6 percent of those sites have been cleaned up completely.
With a record of failure like that, it's no mystery why the Superfund is nearly universally regarded--by environmentalists and business owners alike--as the single most ineffective piece of environmental legislation in history.
Why is the Superfund such a hazard for small businesses?
It starts with the Superfund's liability scheme called
``strict, retroactive, joint and several liability.'' Retroactive liability means a small business owner can be held responsible for action that took place before the law has passed. Even if you didn't act negligently, even if you followed every law and regulation completely--you're still on the hook. Joint and several liability means the company can be forced to pay 100 percent of the cost of cleaning up a Superfund site even though it was only responsible for a small fraction of the pollution.
With marching orders like that, you can guess the EPA's standard operating procedure: Find any organizations even remotely connected with a Superfund site; then drag them into court to make them pay the clean-up bill. So far, over 20,000 small businesses, hospitals, towns, and community groups--even a Girl Scout troop--have been stamped as ``polluters'' by the EPA and face potentially crippling legal liability.
All that litigation costs money--a lot of money. More than 20 percent of all Superfund dollars get spent in the courtroom, not to clean up the environment. That translates into an incredible $6.7 million in lawyers' fees and court costs per Superfund site. No wonder the EPA keeps about 500 lawyers on staff just to work on Superfund liability issues.
So our first recommendation for Superfund reform is repealing retroactive liability for waste disposal prior to 1987, when small businesses were first required to keep detailed disposal records. The conference also recommended changing ``joint and several liability'' to proportional liability, so those liable would only pay to clean up what they're responsible for.
Another recommendation was that Congress should require the EPA to use ``sound science and realistic risk assessments'' in identifying toxic sites and establishing cleanup standards. That just sounds like common sense; you'd thing that danger to health and safety would be the only criteria for selecting Superfund sites. But you'd be wrong. Today's EPA standards are so seriously flawed that according to a recent federal government study, more than half of the so-called hazardous sites on the EPA's National Priorities List don't even pose a threat to human health.
There are several other reforms on our list, but they all share a common goal: creating a new Superfund that focuses on cleaning up the environment, not harassing innocent businesses. These reforms have a good chance of passing Congress, but the Clinton administration--which asked for our recommendations to begin with--is now resisting.
Recently, a group of business and civic leaders from across the state got together to form South Dakotans for Superfund Reform--a grass-roots coalition dedicated to the type of Superfund reform we proposed to the White House. Our goal is to work with South Dakota's elected representatives in Washington to fix Superfund this year.
There are currently four Superfund sites in South Dakota, including one that has been on the EPA's list for more than 10 years. And 15 small businesses and other organizations in South Dakota have been targeted by the EPA. Unless Clinton and Congress fix Superfund, those busineses--and the jobs they provide to South Dakotans--will remain in jeopardy.
The Clinton White House should be on notice. If it's serious about helping small business, it needs to stop blocking Superfund reform. Washington conferences on small business are fine. But real action speaks a lot louder.
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S.D. Group Criticizes Liability Rules
(By Dan Daly)
The 1980 Superfund law was a good idea gone awry, according to a group of business people who launched a political coalition called South Dakotans for Superfund Reform.
The environmental cleanup program has become expensive, ineffective and unfair, coalition members said Wednesday.
Just 15 percent of the nation's 1,355 sites on the Superfund priority list have been cleaned up, according to the group's literature, and half of Superfund dollars go to lawyers and regulators.
But the group's main complaint was about the retroactive liability rules that place blame for pollution--and the job of paying for cleanup--on companies and landowners ``remotely associated with a hazardous waste site,'' according to the group.
``The reality is that this . . . involves innocent landowners, innocent new businesses that come onto a site unknowing about these things,'' said Carol Rae, state chairman of the coalition's steering committee. ``What we want to do is establish reasonable rules and limits on natural resources damages.
``It's not that any of us here are out to say that we do not want environmental protection or to be responsible corporate or private citizens,'' said Rae, vice president of external affairs for Chiron Corp., parent company of Magnum Diamond Corp. in Rapid City.
None of the business people at Wednesday's news conference are themselves liable for Superfund cleanup projects. In fact, only a handful of South Dakota sites have been on the Superfund list.
Their interest, said Rae, is as taxpayers and regulated businesses.
Rae, Kroetch and Rob Wheeler of Wheeler Manufacturing in Lemmon, who was also at Wednesday's news conference, served together as delegates to the recent White House Conference on Small Business.
Rae said the conference delegates identified some 2,000 issues important to small business. Changes in Superfund laws, she said, ranked fifth on the list.
She and seven of the group's steering committee members held a news conference in Rapid City Wednesday to outline their position. Members ranged from Richard Krull, manager of the Merillat Industries particle board plant in Rapid City, to Art Kroetch, president of Scotchman Industries in Philip.
The group itself was organized by Steve Knuth of Sioux Falls, who is working for the National Coalition for Superfund Reform. Knuth formed a similar group earlier this year to push for changes in product liability laws.
____
Superfund Reformers Start Group in S.D.
South Dakotans who want Congress to change the nation's hazardous waste cleanup program, called Superfund, have organized to promote reform.
South Dakotans for Superfund Reform represents people of various business and community backgrounds with ``the desire to see an end to Superfund's unfair and punitive liability system,'' said committee chair Carol Rae of Rapid City.
The group announced its plans Thursday at a Sioux Falls news conference.
Congress enacted the Superfund law in 1980. Since then, the Environmental Protection Agency has placed more than 1,300 sites on its National Priorities List, but has cleaned fewer than 15 percent of them. More than $25 billion in public and private money has been spent on the program--nearly half mainly on lawyers and bureaucracy, Rae said.
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