Edison, NJ --- After taking a tour of the Chemical Insecticide Corporation (CIC) Superfund site today and witnessing the last truckload of contaminated soil being removed from the site, U.S. Rep. Frank Pallone, Jr. (D-NJ) and U.S. Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) both lauded the completion of the cleanup and expressed their gratitude to the Edison community for helping them fight for federal funding over the past 15 years.

The two New Jersey lawmakers blasted the Bush administration for undermining the Superfund program in recent years, and once again urged the administration to restore a Superfund tax so other sites around the state can be completed in a timely fashion. The tax ensures that polluters, not taxpayers, pay for the cleanup of sites like CIC.

The six-acre CIC site is within three miles of more than 77,000 Edison residents. Once used to formulate Agent Orange, the CIC site was laced with contaminants including arsenic, heavy metals and dioxins before it was finally cleaned up.

The CIC site was added to the Superfund list by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in 1990. Since that time, Pallone and Lautenberg, with the help of active community involvement from the Edison Wetlands Association, have fought for funding to clean up the site as quickly as possible. Several times, EPA slowed cleanup due to a shortage of funding, including $28.5 million that Pallone had to fight for in 2002 and then $3.1 million that Pallone, Lautenberg and U.S. Sen. Jon Corzine (D-NJ) had to fight for last year.

"It's been a long and hard fight, but these six acres of land are finally free of ground contamination," Pallone said. "However, we must remain vigilant over the next year and continue to demand constant and proper testing of the ground water so we can be assured the contamination doesn't return.

"The CIC Superfund site is a perfect example of why we must restore the concept of polluter pays," Pallone continued. "Since CIC was an orphaned site, EPA had to fund the entire cleanup either through the Trust Fund or general revenues. The Bush administration can no longer allow taxpayers to foot the bill. Instead, industries most responsible for polluting our land and water should be responsible for making sure its cleaned up as quickly as possible."

Pallone, a senior member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, announced that he will once again reintroduce legislation in the House that will restore the Superfund tax this month.

The Hazardous Substances Superfund Trust Fund tax was allowed to expire in 1995 when a Republican controlled Congress refused to extend it. The trust fund was used to pay for the cleanup of sites where either a responsible polluter could not be determined, or, as in the instance of CIC, had gone bankrupt. Without the tax, the trust fund has disappeared from a high of $3.8 billion in 1996 to $0 today, requiring all clean up funding now come from the general revenues of the U.S. Government.