STATEMENT OF SENATOR JOHN KERRY
Subcommittee on Superfund, Toxics, Risks, and
Waste Mgmt.
July 31, 2002
Thank you, Madame Chair, for the opportunity to testify at this
important hearing today. I also want to thank you for your leadership on
Superfund issues in the Senate.
In the twenty-two year history of the Superfund program, the late
1990's were the best of times. A
record number of cleanups were completed, achieving the environmental and
public health results first envisioned by Superfund’s creators.
Unfortunately, this success is now in serious jeopardy from the Bush
Administration, which is dramatically reducing the number of Superfund site
cleanups completed each year, and allowing critical funds instrumental to the
program’s success to be entirely depleted.
We cannot afford to let our nation’s superfund program fall prey to
President Bush and his so-called Environmental “Protection” Agency. People in
communities all across America are counting on us to save superfund - - not
only for the health of the environment, but for the health of the public as
well.
People in communities - like Patty Estrella in my home state of
Fairhaven, Massachusetts where the abandoned Atlas Tack factory leaches poison
every day into the bay - need our help.
There’s no disputing the facts. In 2000, the EPA offered a clean up
plan for the 24-acre arsenic-laden site that we all thought would actually
happen. But two years after the plan was approved by town and state officials,
the Atlas Tack site remains nearly as dangerous as it was a decade ago.
The EPA doesn’t deny it. In fact, the EPA’s own reports say the site is
a health risk to any human or animal who visits the area or ingests shellfish
harvested nearby.
Knowing this, it’s beyond my comprehension that Atlas Tack’s cleanup -
once scheduled to start in April - is currently destined to remain unfunded by
the Bush Administration.
We are talking here about a site that is known to contain heavy metals,
cyanide, PCBs, pesticides, . . . We are
talking about a site where over 7200 residents, living within one mile of Atlas
Tack, are being forced to live in a toxic plume.
I want to know this of President Bush - - is he willing to go back to
that community and look those families in the eyes and tell them that he is not
going to help?
Because that’s exactly what the EPA Inspector General report says is
going on. The report identifies a
funding shortfall in President Bush's budget of more than $225 million dollars
which will dramatically slow the pace of cleanup at our nation's superfund
sites. Thirty-three sites in 19 states are adversely affected - sites like
Atlas Tack in Fairhaven.
The last time I checked, the goal of the Superfund program is to
expeditiously cleanup the most dangerous contaminated toxic waste sites in the
country to protect public health and the environment.
This goal is being seriously imperiled by the slowdown in cleanups
caused by inadequate funding in the President's Budget. But it doesn’t stop
there.
By refusing to clean up the sites and then collect costs from the
responsible parties, Bush and the EPA have essentially given the nation’s
biggest corporate polluters a multimillion-dollar reprieve.
Throughout the program’s history, Superfund clean ups were primarily
paid for by the polluters themselves. A
trust fund was also established, based on funds collected from both a corporate
environmental income tax and excise taxes to pay for the clean up of sites
where EPA could not find the responsible party, or the guilty party was
bankrupt or unwilling to conduct the cleanup.
EPA says the trust fund was used to clean 30 percent of the waste sites,
while guilty corporations paid for the other 70 percent.
The concept of polluter pays will become an empty slogan if something
is not done to keep the trust fund from going broke in 2004. The fund has dwindled from a high of $3.8
billion in 1996 to an estimated $28 million next year. So who’s left footing a large portion of the
bill? The answer, unfortunately, is taxpayers.
This situation is unacceptable on a number of levels - - not only is
the President not willing to clean up our nation’s most contaminated sites, he
wants to shift the costs away from the polluters and towards the
taxpayers.
I would hope to hear today from the EPA not more of their excuses for
letting cleanups at our Superfund sites come to a standstill or their excuses
for letting corporate polluters off the hook, but what the agency is going to
do to remedy this situation.
I want answers and I want them today. People like Patty Estrella that
have been fighting for years to rid their neighborhoods of toxic contamination
deserve answers.