The Environment and Public Works Committee has achieved significant progress because its members have always worked in a bipartisan manner. Out of this cooperative spirit, Congress enacted the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act of 1980. This landmark statute was enacted only because members of this Committee had the foresight to reach across the aisle and forge bipartisan solutions to the startling environmental problems that faced this nation. They knew that partisanship would be no excuse for ignoring the discovery of toxic waste sites, such as Love Canal in New York or the Valley of the Drums in Kentucky.
Indeed, the original Senate Superfund bill was a bipartisan effort from the beginning. The bill was co-sponsored by the chairmen and ranking minority members of the full committee and the two subcommittees with jurisdiction, including Senators John Culver of Iowa, Edmund Muskie of Maine, Robert Stafford of Vermont, Jennings Randolph of West Virginia, Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York, and my father Senator John Chafee of Rhode Island. Four of these original co-sponsors chaired the full Committee at one point in time.
As the Superfund program began to develop, we discovered that it created incentives for litigation and was too costly and time consuming. Since 1994, this committee has debated proposals to reform the inadequacies of Superfund. During this debate, EPA also undertook a wide variety of administrative reforms within the constraints of the existing statute to make the program more efficient, more fair, and less costly. The reforms, which I believe EPA Assistant Administrator Tim Fields will discuss in part today, are one reason why the nature of the debate has changed. While the program is far from perfect, it is frankly a better program than the one that existed in 1994.
Since becoming chairman of this subcommittee, I have been visiting Rhode Island's thirteen National Priorities List sites to see first hand how the Superfund program works on the ground. Rhode Island's NPL sites represent a good cross-section of the types of sites found around the country. Each of Rhode Island's sites include highly emotional issues, such as sites with contaminated groundwater, sites with contaminated river sediments, sites with municipal liability issues, and sites with dioxin contaminated soils in residential areas. At each site I visit, I ask local officials, residents, and responsible parties how the federal Superfund program is operating at their site. I must be honest; time after time, I hear that EPA is doing outstanding job. I have been told that EPA has been responsive to the concerns of local communities and has worked hard to enhance fairness and the pace of cleanup. Acknowledging that today's Superfund program is different, I would like to take a fresh look at Superfund to identify the current status of cleanup activities, the accomplishments achieved so far, and what improvements can be made to enhance cleanups. In essence, I would like a "snapshot" of the current program, so we can make informed decisions on the course of action to pursue.
We have two questions before us: "Where are we today?" and "Where do we go from here?". The federal Superfund program has made significant progress in cleaning up the nation's worst hazardous waste sites. According to EPA, more than ninety percent of cleanup decisions have been made and more than half of all remedy construction is deemed "complete." Potentially responsible parties and tax payers have spent tens of billions of dollars cleaning up sites across the nation. While Superfund was originally enacted to address the nation's worst hazardous waste sites, today's situation is different. Companies have made large advances in waste management and remediation technology; state and local governments have developed mature cleanup programs; and the public is more involved in Superfund decisions that affect their communities.
From here we must focus on the parts of the program that can be agreed to on a bipartisan basis to ensure that the worst sites are cleaned up quickly, safely, and fairly. It has been my experience, and the experience of the Committee, that progress can be made if we reach across the aisle to craft solutions that benefit everyone. I would like to re-inject that type of cooperation into the Superfund debate. I don't believe we can succeed without it. I look forward to working with Senator Lautenberg and all members of the subcommittee to find solutions to the remaining problems.