EDF Applauds "Children's Protection And Community Clean-Up Act"

The Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) today applauded the introduction by Reps. Frank Pallone (D-NJ), John Lewis (D-GA) and others of the Children’s Protection and Community Clean-up Act.

“The Environmental Defense Fund has worked extensively on Superfund reauthorization throughout the last several years,” said EDF senior attorney Karen Florini. “Initially, we worked with a wide array of businesses and environmental groups, as well as with the Administration and Congress, to craft a comprehensive bill. But that widely supported bill was not enacted. In the years since then, the program has changed greatly, so that a comprehensive bill is no longer necessary or appropriate. Now, the time has come to focus on brownfields.”

“But if comprehensive Superfund legislation were to move forward, it should look like the bill being introduced today by Mr. Pallone and his colleagues. This bill strengthens protections, gives communities a stronger voice in Superfund decisions, closes liability loopholes, and improves community right-to-know. We are delighted to have the opportunity to endorse it today,” said Florini.

“This bill focuses on ensuring that cleanups effectively protect the public, particularly children and other sensitive groups, and preserve groundwater as a resource for the future. It also preserves the principle of polluter-pays, which assures that financial responsibility for cleaning up toxic dumpsites rests with parties that helped create those messes, not the general taxpayer,” said Florini.

Among other provisions, the bill requires use of cleanup standards that expressly protect children’s health, and assures protection of land and water resources. The bill also maintains Superfund’s polluter pays approach while adopting provisions to curtail polluters’ abuses of the contribution system. In addition, the bill strengthens community right-to-know about toxics and inadequately tested chemicals, adds environmental justice features such as mandatory evaluation of potential Superfund sites in certain economically distressed areas, and enhances community participation.

“The bill introduced today by Mr. Pallone contrasts notably with H.R. 1300, the bill by Representative Boehlert (R-NY). That measure repeals the requirement that cleanups meet certain types of standards, creates new liability loopholes, and shifts substantial cleanup costs to taxpayers ? without re-instating the polluter-pays taxes that lapsed in 1995, thus continuing industry’s $4 million per day tax holiday.”