STATEMENT OF MARIANNE LAMONT HORINKO
ASSISTANT ADMINISTRATOR
OFFICE OF SOLID
WASTE AND EMERGENCY RESPONSE
U.S. ENVIRONMENTAL
PROTECTION AGENCY
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON
SUPERFUND, TOXICS,
RISK AND WASTE MANAGEMENT
UNITED STATES SENATE
July 31, 2002
Good morning Madam Chairman and Members of
the Subcommittee. I am Marianne
Horinko, Assistant Administrator of the Office of Solid Waste and Emergency
Response, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. I am pleased to appear today to discuss Superfund program
progress, new program challenges including Superfund program funding issues,
and what EPA is doing to address those challenges.
Administrator Whitman and the Bush
Administration are fully committed to Superfund=s mission, protecting human health
and the environment by cleaning up our Nation=s worst hazardous waste sites. Thanks to a decade of reforms launched by
the first Bush Administration and continued by the previous Administration, the
Superfund program has achieved dramatic success. In that same bipartisan spirit, we embrace the new issues facing
the program as it matures.
SUPERFUND PROGRESS
The Superfund program continues to make
progress in cleaning up hazardous waste sites. To date, 93 percent of the sites on the National Priority List (NPL)
are either undergoing cleanup construction or have cleanup construction
completed:
* 815 Superfund sites have reached
construction completion
* 391 Superfund sites have cleanup
construction underway
Further, more than
7000 removal actions have been completed at NPL and non-NPL sites. In Fiscal Year 2001, EPA completed
construction at 47 Superfund sites.
However, the decline in the number of NPL sites that reached construction
completion in Fiscal Year 2001, as compared with Fiscal Year 2000, did not
reflect the amount of cleanup construction underway at Superfund sites. EPA has maintained the number of
construction projects underway at NPL sites, more than 730 per year, from Fiscal Years 1999 through 2001. The President=s Fiscal Year 2003 budget request
continues a commitment to clean up hazardous waste sites by maintaining EPA=s budget for the
Superfund program with a request of $1.29 billion.
SUPERFUND CLEANUP
COMMITMENTS AND COST RECOVERY
Fiscal Year 2001
produced a near record $ 1.7 billion in Superfund cost recovery and cleanup
commitments from responsible parties.
EPA=s enforcement
program secured $1.3 billion in cleanup commitments from responsible
parties. An additional $ 413 million
was secured to reimburse EPA for past cleanup costs - - nearly $300 million more than in Fiscal Year
2000. The cumulative value of
responsible party commitments since the inception of the program now exceed $20
billion. This Administration continues
its strong commitment to the Apolluter pays@ principle, which has historically generated
70 percent of non-Federal Superfund site cleanup from responsible parties. Under this Administration, EPA vigorously
conducts searches for responsible parties at every Superfund site and is
striving to maximize every opportunity to recover Agency cleanup costs from
responsible parties.
BROWNFIELDS PROGRAM
EPA=s brownfields
program, through its grants, loans, and other assistance, continues to promote
the cleanup, development and reuse of blighted, abandoned brownfield sites
throughout the country. The brownfields
program has successfully supplemented the cleanup and development efforts of
states, Tribes and local governments. I
am pleased to report that since its inception, EPA=s brownfields
cleanup program has leveraged more than $3.7 billion in cleanup and
redevelopment funds, and has generated more than 17,000 jobs. EPA funding has provided the resources to
states, Tribes and local communities to assess more than 2,600 brownfield
sites.
Thanks to the
enactment of bipartisan brownfields legislation, we can expect to see even
greater success by states, Tribes and local communities in reclaiming
brownfield sites and encouraging the cleanup and reuse of sites by the private
sector. EPA is now in the process of
planning implementation of the provisions in the Small Business Liability
Relief and Brownfields Revitalization Act (Public Law 107-118). The Fiscal Year 2003 budget reflects the President=s priorities and our
commitment to cleaning up and revitalizing communities by doubling the
brownfields budget to $200 million.
REDEVELOPMENT AND
REUSE
I have made land
revitalization a top priority for the Office of Solid Waste and Emergency Response
and it is an integral part of the way EPA is implementing all waste cleanup
programs. Simply achieving cleanup is
not enough. It is necessary to view a
property in terms also of the future economic, recreational or ecological
benefits it represents to those who live nearby. It is important that we build on our success in the Brownfields
program and make land revitalization a part of the Agency=s organizational
culture. We are making progress in the
Superfund program. More than 260
Superfund sites have been put back into reuse, generating more than 15,000 jobs
and representing $500 million in economic activity. While our fundamental mission remains to protect human health and
the environment, we need to ensure that we fully consider a community=s desired future
land use for a property as we make cleanup decisions. We are working on tools to assist EPA managers and staff as they
work closely with State, public and private stakeholders in facilitating property
revitalization.
OIG RESPONSE ON SUPERFUND
FUNDING NEEDS
By letter dated June 24, 2002, the
EPA Inspector General (IG) responded to an inquiry by U.S. Representatives John
Dingell and Frank Pallone on Superfund program funding needs. The IG response included a series of enclosures
that contained Superfund site information provided by the Office of Solid Waste
and Emergency Response (OSWER). The
enclosures contained Superfund site information from OSWER databases as of May,
2002. The information represented a
snap-shot in time and did not reflect end of fiscal year data. The response indicated that EPA regions
earlier in the year had estimated Superfund construction needs of approximately
$450 million, while EPA had $224 million of appropriated funding available to
allocate. The response did not take
into account the funding from unliquidated obligations available for
deobligaton in expired contracts, interagency agreements, and grants that EPA
and its regions are generating in the 3rd and 4th
quarters of this fiscal year. This
additional funding should total approximately $40 million, for a total of $264
million.
Overall, the funding
levels for the Superfund program have remained relatively steady at $ 1.3 to $
1.5 billion over the past 5 years.
Superfund program funding has provided sufficient levels of funding to
continue on-going construction work.
Notwithstanding recent press reports, no Superfund sites have had
cleanup construction suspended, and sites that pose an immediate risk to public
health or the environment have been and will continue to be addressed by the
Agency.
No Cuts to Superfund
Site Funding
Recent media reports
inaccurately attributed to the IG response a list of 33 Superfund sites where
EPA purportedly cut funding. The IG
response did not contain a list of 33 sites with funding cuts and never
characterized any of the information in the response as representing funding
cuts. An enclosure in the response
listed all sites eligible for construction funding and identified those sites
that had not yet received funding as of
the date in May when the data was generated by OSWER.
How Superfund
Program Funding Really Works
Inaccurate media
reports have exhibited a fundamental misunderstanding of the Superfund program
funding process. The Superfund cleanup
construction program is constantly evolving and funding decisions are made over
the course of the entire year - - not at the beginning of the fiscal year. Experience has taught us that the
preliminary funding need estimates generated by EPA regions often represent
levels that build in numerous contingencies that, over the course of the fiscal
year, result in an over-estimate of the amount of funding needed to continue
construction progress. Further, some
sites identified at the beginning of the fiscal year by EPA regions as having
construction funding needs are not actually ready to start construction before
the end of the fiscal year for a variety of reasons; including changed site
conditions, engineering or design modifications, or the identification of a
viable responsible party to fund the work in place of EPA. Therefore, many of the construction funding
decisions that will be made by the Agency during this fiscal year, had not been
made at the time the IG response was released.
Many of the funding
decisions in the Superfund program are historically made in the 3rd
and 4th quarters of the fiscal year because there is a Congressional
hold back of $100 million of cleanup funding in the EPA appropriations bill
until September lst, and monies deobligated from expired contracts, interagency
agreements, and grants generally become available during this time frame. These monies are used to fund Superfund
construction projects before the end of the fiscal year.
Following Agency
practice, EPA has made additional Superfund funding decisions at sites since
the release of the IG response.
Further, as expected, some sites identified early in the year by EPA
regions as needing construction funding, will not be ready for construction
funding by the end of this fiscal year.
Of the 33 Superfund sites reported by the media as purportedly having
their funding cut, 8 sites have been funded for new construction work, 3 sites
have been funded to continue on-going construction work, and 6 sites will not
need construction funding in this fiscal year.
Not all of the sites have received money to date, and likely will not
receive funding until September of this year.
The Agency will make further site funding decisions as monies become
available from the regional efforts to deobligate monies from expired
contracts, interagency agreements, and grants.
NEW CLEANUP
CHALLENGES
As the Superfund
program continues into its third decade, new challenges must be met to continue
the progress in cleaning up hazardous waste sites. In 2000, EPA had
anticipated the potential for a reduction in achieving site construction
completions. The Superfund process,
from site listing to cleanup construction, on average has taken roughly 8 to 10
years. Decisions made 5 years before a
site ever reaches the construction phase, for instance delaying the Remedial
Investigation / Feasibility Study (RIFS), will have an impact on when that site
reaches construction completion many years later. This is the current situation we face in the Superfund program
The reduction in construction
completions has resulted from a variety of factors, including decisions made
years ago on funding priorities; the size and number of construction projects
at remaining non-construction complete sites on the NPL; and the need to
balance competing environmental priorities within the Superfund program. In prior years, EPA focused resources on
Superfund sites that needed less construction work and that were further along
in the cleanup process, thus creating a backlog of more difficult sites and
sites with significant years of construction work remaining.
Remaining Sites
Larger and More Complex
The remaining number
of Superfund sites that have not reached the completion stage includes
area-wide ground water sites, mining sites, sediment sites, and federal
facility sites. The size and complexity
of these remaining sites generally indicate longer project durations and
increased costs required to complete cleanup construction. There is now a greater number of federal
facilities and very large and complex sites (sites exceeding $50 million in
cleanup costs) as a percentage of NPL sites not yet completed than ever before. Of the remaining 675 final NPL sites not
construction complete, 138 are federal facilities and an additional 93 sites
are very large and complex sites.
Fewer Sites are
Candidates For Completion
The pool of candidate sites for
construction completion has become much smaller, thus having a significant impact
on the number of sites that reach construction completion. The vast majority of Superfund sites were
listed in the first decade of the program. Many of these sites have reached
construction completion. As site
listings significantly declined in the 1990's, so did the pool of candidates
for construction completion. It has
historically taken roughly 8 to 10 years to complete Superfund sites, therefore
sites listed after 1994 are, for the most part, unlikely candidates for
construction completion. The Superfund
program has final listed 190 sites on the NPL over the past seven years. Adding those sites to the number of federal
facility sites (138) and very large/complex sites (93) that are not yet
construction complete totals 421 sites.
Subtract that number from the total number of sites not yet construction
complete (675) and the Superfund program is faced with a relatively small pool
of likely construction completion candidates (254) - as opposed to the more than 1200 sites final listed in the
first decade of the Superfund program (1983-1990).
SUPERFUND PIPELINE
MANAGEMENT REVIEW
Although the number of Superfund sites completing
construction in a given year is being affected by program decisions made years
before, EPA is looking for new ways to improve
program performance. The Agency
has initiated a comprehensive review of all Superfund projects in or
approaching the most expensive phase of our project pipeline, construction. After completion of this analysis and
implementation of some challenging decisions, EPA intends to manage toward
creating an optimal balance between the achievement of risk reduction,
construction progress, and beneficial reuse at Superfund sites. A draft three year plan is scheduled to be
completed at the end of the summer.
NACEPT PROCESS
EPA has launched a
public dialogue through the National Advisory Council on Environmental Policy
and Technology (NACEPT), a Federal advisory committee comprised of a broad
cross-section of stakeholders, that will examine the role of the Superfund
program in addressing very large/complex sites, the appropriate role of listing
sites on the NPL as one of many tools to address contaminated sites, and
strategies to improve program effectiveness and efficiency through coordination
with States, Tribes, and the public.
The first meeting of the NACEPT Superfund Subcommittee was held in
June. EPA will work closely with the
Environment and Public Works Committee as the NACEPT expert panel debates these
important public policy issues.
CONCLUSION
EPA will continue its efforts to
improve Superfund program performance and meet the many new challenges facing
the Agency in cleaning up toxic waste sites.
The Superfund program will continue to clean up the Nation=s worst toxic waste
sites, to protect public health and the environment, and provide opportunities
for reuse and redevelopment to communities across the country. The success of the Superfund program can be
attributed in large part to the bipartisan and broad based consensus that
developed for the common sense legislative and administrative reform of the
program over the past decade. By
working together in a non-partisan, problem solving fashion, I am convinced
that we can continue that success. The
President is fully committed to the Superfund program=s success and toward
fashioning a sustainable future course for the program as it continues into its
third decade. EPA and the
Administration look forward to working with the members of this committee and
the Congress in the months and years ahead as we strive to meet our common goal
of protecting public health and the environment.