Hazards: Technology and Fairness (1986)

Below is the uncorrected machine-read text of this chapter, intended to provide our own search engines and external engines with highly rich, chapter-representative searchable text of each book. Because it is UNCORRECTED material, please consider the following text as a useful but insufficient proxy for the authoritative book pages.

ECONOMIC, LEGAL, AND PRACTICAL PROBLEMS IN HAZARDOUS WASTE 178 CLEANUP AND MANAGEMENT original typesetting files. Page breaks are true to the original; line lengths, word breaks, heading styles, and other typesetting-specific formatting, however, cannot be About this PDF file: This new digital representation of the original work has been recomposed from XML files created from the original paper book, not from the retained, and some typographic errors may have been accidentally inserted. Please use the print version of this publication as the authoritative version for attribution. responsible parties. The private parties are held liable for exactly the same actions as those by the federal agencies, yet the federal agencies may not pay a cent for cleanup. States are severely hindered in carrying out their roles in the Superfund process when federal facilities are held "above the law" in cases involving hazardous waste. Amendments to CERCLA that would close the loopholes for federal facilities have been proposed, but prospects for their passage are poor. PRACTICAL PROBLEMS In addition to legal problems, numerous management problems also can delay cleanup actions by the state. For instance, the EPA has changed its guidelines for feasibility studies several times. We must now identify a "no action" option and a proper closure option. In the case of the Whitehouse Oil Pits site, options added to the feasibility study to accommodate changes in the guidelines delayed us six months. Even though we knew ahead of time the options would be rejected, we were still required to incorporate them in the feasibility study. Changes in EPA guidelines also result in our having to amend contracts. In my opinion, we need to distinguish between sites with financially solvent, cooperative responsible parties, and others, to allow the Superfund process to operate as it was intended. Few people realize that listing a site on the Superfund National Priority List (NPL) can actually be counterproductive in achieving cleanup of the site. The EPA, under misplaced congressional pressure, has listed several Florida sites for which the state had made major progress in negotiations to secure cleanup by the responsible party. When these sites are listed on the NPL, progress slows. One of the major reasons for the slowdown is that a company usually waits for EPA to evaluate its cleanup plan before proceeding, since it would not want to be told later by EPA that the plan was inadequate. Cleanup was delayed in this way for several months at the Harris Corporation site in Palm Bay and at the Pratt & Whitney site in West Palm Beach. However, cleanup plans have been approved by EPA at both sites, and cleanup will proceed soon. To further complicate matters, EPA is contemplating adding to the Super- fund list Florida sites that have been cleaned up by the responsible parties through state enforcement actions. Although the sites are cleaned up, EPA is required—before delisting them—to confirm the cleanup with groundwater sampling, which usually costs the government between $100,000 and $250,000 per site. A practical problem that slows action on hazardous waste site cleanup—at both the state and the federal levels—is the long turnaround time for analysis