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February 25, 2002
Superfund Gets the Super Shaft
The White House wants taxpayers to fund cleaning up industrial waste. Expect a fight in Congress
By Jessica Reaves, The Reno Gazette-Journal
President Bush is shifting his environmental policy into high gear, leaving environmentalists more than a little nervous — and putting some business leaders in an awfully good mood. Two weeks ago, the White House unveiled a new policy on global warming that rejects many of the fundamental principles of the Kyoto treaty and emphasizes self-regulation by business. It also, importantly, waives pollution controls during economic slowdowns. Now Bush wants to change the way government has funded environmental cleanups since the Reagan era. And his proposed changes may prove to be something of an amnesty for many corporations penalized under the Superfund sites.

OP-ED- December 12, 2003
Superfund's funding not so super
My View: Polluters. not taxpayers, should pay for the cleanup of
toxic waste sites.
By Lois Gibbs and Rhett Lawrence, The Tribune
Twenty-three years ago, President Jimmy Carter signed the federal Superfund program into law to clean up toxic waste sites and to ensure that polluters, not taxpayers, paid for the program.

Op-ED-Tuesday, December 16, 2003
Reinstate polluter-pays fees
By Lois Gibbs and Mo McBroom Guest Columnist
Twenty-three years ago, President Carter signed the federal Superfund program into law to clean up toxic waste sites and ensure that polluters, not taxpayers, paid the costs. It also created a special fund filled by fees on the use of highly toxic chemicals and petroleum products to clean up thousands of abandoned waste sites across the country.

National Wildlife Federation Magazine - NWF's website
American Heroes Protecting Her Kids From Toxic Dumps
By Carolyn Duckworth
Three miles upstream from the roar of Niagara Falls in New York lies a quiet island where Kathy Hadley grew up and fished and hunted with her brothers. She became a biologist, married, had a child and led a quiet life until 1977. In that year, her son Erik and her sister´s children developed seizures, blood disease and liver-damage symptoms, all typical signs of exposure to toxic chemicals. Long-forgotten buried toxic wastes were seeping into her sister´s house--where Erik spent his days while his parents  worked--and onto the playground in the Niagara Falls neighborhood called Love Canal.

January 8, 2004
EPA failed to fund many recommended waste cleanups
By Bill Lambrecht, St. Louis Post Dispatch, MO
WASHINGTON - The Environmental Protection Agency's inspector general said Thursday that the EPA did not provide enough money last year for hazardous waste cleanups recommended by the agency's own administrators. The unfunded Superfund projects included:

January 8, 2004
EPA Chief: Superfund Short on Funds
ABC 7 News
Washington (AP) - Cleanup work at 11 of the worst toxic dumps in the country hasn't started because the Superfund program doesn't have enough money, the Environmental Protection Agency's inspector general said Thursday.

January 9, 2004
Superfund program faced $175 million shortfall in ´03, report says
Waste News
WASHINGTON -- The Superfund program for cleaning up the nation´s most seriously contaminated sites fell nearly $175 million short of the funding necessary to undertake all of the cleanup efforts proposed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency´s 10 regions in fiscal year 2003, according to recently released report.

January 9, 2004
Superfund cleanups in state face shortfall
By John Heilprin Merrimack / Nashua, Associated Press
WASHINGTON - Cleanup work at 11 of the worst toxic dumps in the country hasn't started because the Superfund program doesn't have enough money, the Environmental Protection Agency's inspector general said yesterday.

January 9, 2004
Superfund enormously under-funded says Inspector General
By Sorcha CliffordEdie Weekly Summaries © Faversham House Group Ltd
The Inspector General of the US Environment Protection Agency has reported a funding shortfall of US$175 million for the government run program to clean up hazardous waste sites.

January 9, 2004
Superfund cuts Libby short
By: Ted Monoson- The Billings Gazette, MT
WASHINGTON - Federal efforts to clean up sites in Montana that are polluted with toxins are being delayed by a lack of money, according to a report released Thursday. Environmental Protection Agency officials in Montana told the agency's inspector general that they could have used an additional $3.7 million last year for the cleanup in Libby and an additional $1.3 million for the cleanup of the Upper Ten Mile Creek site.

January 9, 2004
Toxic sites fester due to funding woes State Superfund projects could be affected in future
Oakland Tribune, CA
Cleanup work at 11 of the worst toxic dumps in the country hasn't started because the Superfund program doesn't have enough money, the Environmental Protection Agency's inspector general said Thursday.The $3 billion program has a shortfall of nearly $175 million, according to the report.

January 25, 2004
Asbestos, Grace and Disgrace
By: Rick Bass, Post-Dispatch, MT
Journalists reveal government stonewalling on penalties in the 200-plus deaths linked to W.R. Grace's vermiculite mine. In the middle of one of the most beautiful velvet green forests I've ever seen, in the northwestern corner of Montana, not far from my home, there is a mountain with its  top sawed off, like some cranial operation gone horribly wrong. So toxic was the material beneath the mountain -- vermiculite ore, associated with asbestos -- that nothing grows on the sawn-off mountaintop.

January 30, 2004
EPA: Superfund cleanup going well
By Tim Wacker, Eagle Tribune
KINGSTON -- Federal environmental officials said yesterday a recently finished, five-year study found the cleanup at the Kingston Steel Drum Superfund site on Route 125 is going nicely.

February 4, 2004
GROUPS WANT CLEANUP TAX REVIVED; THREE S. FLORIDA SITES STILL HAVE TOXIC CHEMICALS
By: David Fleshler, Broward Metro Edition, FL
Three heavily polluted sites in South Florida will not get cleaned up for years because the Bush administration is refusing to renew a tax on oil and chemical companies, environmental groups said Tuesday.

February 4, 2004
Bush budget cuts sewer aid
By Charles Seabrook, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, GA
While Atlanta and several other U.S. cities scramble for funds to pay for massive sewer repairs, President Bush's new budget proposal would drastically slash spending for sewage cleanup and related projects.

February 5, 2004
Toxic water, soil linger at plant site
By Holly Edwards - Middle Tennessee News & Information
Some in Wrigley blame pollution for health problems Zertie Choate says he's ''darn proud'' of the old Wrigley Charcoal Plant.The 85-year-old worked there for 32 years, saving enough of his salary that started at $12 a week to send both of his children to college.

February 7, 2004
Love Canal activist shares story
By John Myers, News Tribune Staff Writer
ENVIRONMENT: Lois Gibbs, credited with unearthing the truth about the toxic waste dump, is giving the keynote address at the Living Green Conference.

Missoulian.com
Libby cleanup workers' pay cut $10 an hour
By Jennifer McKee, Missoulian State Bureau
Workers removing asbestos from contaminated homes in Libby had their wages slashed last month as U.S. Environmental Protection Agency officials try to stretch cleanup dollars for the town designated the nation's highest-priority Superfund site.

February 10, 2004
JH Kelly eyes ex-Superfund site
By Gretchen Fehrenbacher, Columbian Staff Writer
A Longview company is proposing development of a Vancouver business property on a cleaned-up Superfund site near Grand Boulevard.

February 11, 2004
Raymark cleanup likely to run out of cash
Richard Weizel, Register Correspondent
STRATFORD - Officials from the federal Environmental Protection Agency told the
Raymark Advisory Committee Tuesday a Raymark fund of $15 million will likely run
out before a vast majority of the contaminated properties can be cleaned up.

February 12, 2004
Superfund fees are essential
Poughkeepsie Journal Editorial
New York's senators are paying heed to the need to place an East Fishkill community on the federal list of environmental cleanup sites.

February 15, 2004
Polluters Pays' Is The Right Environmental Strategy
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (Pennsylvania)
Finding a dedicated source of funding to clean up toxic waste sites is essential if Pennsylvania is serious about protecting public health and encouraging economic development -- especially since Congress has allowed the federal Superfund hazardous waste trust fund to become depleted.

February 18, 2004
Milestone for massive Superfund cleanup
By Gary Chittim / King 5 News Tacoma, Wash.
Industry is not leaving Commencment Bay - it helped clean it up and has an opportunity and obligation to keep it that way.

February 18, 2004
Jeffords-Boxer Press Release: GAO Says 35% Cut in Superfund Since 1993. Jeffords and Boxer Push for Reauthorization of Superfund Fees
Erik Smulson (JEFFORDS) 202-224-5141
David Sandretti (BOXER) 202-224-8120
WASHINGTON, D.C. - U.S. Sens. Jim Jeffords, I - Vt., and Barbara Boxer, D - Cal., today unveiled an analysis by the General Accounting Office (GAO) which shows that the Superfund program has seen a 35% decline in funding, or $633 million, since 1993.

February 19, 2004
Sierra Club fights to keep rules
Quality director says Bush's moves against clean air and water raise national concern
By Paul Fattig, Mail Tribune
Ed Hopkins acknowledges the war in Iraq coupled with the domestic jobless rate in the past year has pushed environmental concerns off the front pages.

February 19, 2004
Legislative Watch
Natural Resources Defense Council's
The president's blueprint proposes cutting the EPA's budget by more than $600 million, or about 7 percent. The cuts would come primarily from the agency's research budget, and from water pollution projects, which would receive $872 million less than last year. Although the president proposed increasing the Superfund program by $124 million, he continues to oppose reinstating Superfund's "polluter pays" fee, leaving taxpayers responsible for the cost of cleaning up Superfund sites.

February 20, 2004
The Washington Post
Senators Ask For Larger Superfund; Cleanup by Polluters Offsets Reduced Funding, EPA Says
Juliet Eilperin Washington Post Staff Writer
A steady decline in Superfund funding has alarmed lawmakers and some Environmental Protection Agency officials, who argue dangerous sites are not being cleaned up because of a lack of funds.

February 20, 2004
Superfund money is falling, say lawmakers
By Juliet Eilperin, Washington Post Staff Writer
A steady decline in Superfund funding has alarmed lawmakers and some Environmental Protection Agency officials, who argue dangerous sites are not being cleaned up because of a lack of funds.

February 20, 2004
Restore Superfund tax, environmentalist urges
By Erik Robinson, Columbian staff writer
It's been nearly a decade since Congress allowed a corporate tax for the federal Superfund program to expire.

February 21, 2005
N.J. buys contaminated sites for schools
Health risks concern some residents
Associated Press
TRENTON, N.J. -- A government agency overseeing a program to improve school buildings in New Jersey's 31 poorest districts has purchased at least 22 contaminated or possibly contaminated sites, according to a published report. The Schools Construction Corp. plans to build one middle school campus on a federal Superfund site with radioactive soil once the land is decontaminated, Gannett New Jersey reported Sunday.

February 23, 2004
Is Superfund a Super Flop?
24 Superfund Sites Here in the Northland
By Erin Jordan
CBS Duluth, MN
Superfund is a government program intended to clean up toxic waste sites. The Environmental Protection Agency recognizes 24 Superfund sites here in the Northland. One environmental activist says these polluted lands are not getting the attention needed because Superfund in not living up to expectations.

March 1, 2004
Greenwatch Today
EPA Misleading Public on Superfund
The Bush Administration's Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is misleading the public about its commitment to clean up toxic waste sites, according to a report released late last week by U.S. PIRG and the Sierra Club. 

OP-ED Another View:
The people must not pay to clean NH Superfund sites
By Rick Russman
For nearly a quarter century, the federal Superfund program has protected communities and landowners from the latent effects of polluted industrial sites.It requires companies responsible for pollution to pay to restore the land, water and air to useable condition. When no responsible party can be found, Superfund uses money from a special reserve account, collected through a corporate tax, to address these “orphan sites.”

March 1, 2004
Monsanto and Pfizer could be facing fines
By Rachel Melcer , STL Today. Com
Environmental regulators, fed up with finger-pointing and legal wrangling over the cleanup of a toxic mess in Sauget, have given Pfizer Inc. and Monsanto Co. until today to say how they will deal with the matter.

March 06, 2004
Residents by site confident in its cleanup
By Greg C. Bruno, Gainsville Sun
Few would fault Sharon Sheets if she packed her bags and left. With arsenic, benzene and other federally regulated waste just beyond her back yard, who could blame her? But after more than two decades of living next to the Cabot-Koppers Superfund site in northwest Gainesville, Sheets is taking a different approach.

March 6, 2004
Richland residents urge restoring polluter tax ;
Cleaning up Superfund landfill depends on such a move, they say.
By Pervaiz Shallwani, The Morning Call, PA
With the Watson Johnson landfill in the distance, environmental advocates and Richland Township residents urged lawmakers on Friday to reinstate a tax on polluters that pays for toxic waste cleanups. Congress is scheduled to vote this spring on a budget item that would reinstate the tax polluters paid to fund the federal Superfund cleanup program. "

March 6, 2004
Tar Creek buyout
Tulsa World (Oklahoma) Editorial
Sullivan keeps idea in the mix U.S. Rep. John Sullivan should be commended for not dismissing the idea of a federal buyout for the residents of the Tar Creek Superfund site. By saying publicly that the idea should remain open to discussion, Sullivan takes some partisan maneuvering and political gamesmanship out of the debate.

March 7, 2004
Residents want Superfund cleanup
By Brian Callaway, The Intelligencer
RICHLAND - She's been relying on bottled water since 1998. For Lisa Lambrecht, drinking from the tap in her Richlandtown Pike home hasn't been an option since she found out about groundwater contamination linked to thousands of tons of toxic waste buried just a leisurely walk from her yard.

March 7, 2004
A Federal Court Sides with GE in its Suit over the Superfund Law
Legal Muck Albany Times-Union, NY
And you suspected the bottom of the  Hudson River , where General Electric Co., had dumped all those PCBs years ago, was muddy. Could the riverbed be any less murky than what's going on in court and in the offices of the company's lawyers? 

March 8, 2004
Letter to the Editor, Miami Herald, FL
Re: The Feb. 17 article Sugar is prescribed to cure dump's ills:
       The Feb. 18 article Landfill cleanups to be bankrolled

March 8, 2004
EPA Seeks to Expand Toxic Waste Clean Up
By John Heilprin, The Associated Press
WASHINGTON - The Environmental Protection Agency on Monday proposed adding another 11 sites to its Superfund program for cleaning up the nation's worst toxic waste contamination. The sites range from lead mine wastes threatening downstream fisheries to an unknown source of drinking well contamination for thousands of people.

March 8, 2004
No more diverting money designated for waste sites
Atlanta Journal-Constitution, GA
Superfund, the federal program that has cleaned up some of the nation's worst toxic waste sites, isn't so super anymore. Established by Congress in 1980, the program has been stripped of a key source of funding, leaving taxpayers holding the bag.

March 8, 2004
New sites proposed for Superfund cleanups
Critics want more, EPA says these are time consuming
MSNBC staff and news service reports
The Environmental Protection Agency on Monday proposed adding another 11 sites to its Superfund program for cleaning up the nation’s worst toxic waste contamination. Environmental groups, however, were not ready to pat the administration on the back, stating instead that more should have been proposed.

March 9, 2004

Rebuilding the Superfund

GLOBE EDITORIAL
FOR ALMOST 10 years, the oil and chemical industries have avoided the tax for toxic waste cleanups that the Superfund law originally called on them and other large corporations to pay. After the Republican takeover in 1994, Congress just stopped renewing the tax, leaving it to individual taxpayers to pay an increasing share of the cost of cleaning up "orphaned" toxic sites where it is impossible to collect from the original polluter. On Monday, 11 sites were added to the national priority list.

March 9, 2004
Superfund Democrats Plan to Offer Budget Amendment
To Reauthorize 'Polluter' Taxes for Cleanups
By Meredith Preston
Two Democrats plan to propose an amendment to the Senate budget resolution for fiscal year 2005 that would reinstate the so-called "polluter pays" superfund tax, according to a spokesman for one of the members. Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.), with Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), plans to introduce the amendment March 10 or 11 when the Senate is scheduled to vote on the fiscal 2005 budget resolution (S. Con. Res. 95), Alex Formuzis, a spokesman for Lautenberg, told BNA March 8.

March 9, 2004
EPA proposes adding Grants plume to Superfund program
By Patricia L. Garcia, AP Writer, Albuquerque, NM
The Environmental Protection Agency is proposing adding a chlorinated solvents plume in Grants to its Superfund program. The Grants Chlorinated Solvents Plume, located in a mixed commercial and residential area, is among 11 sites in the nation and the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico that the EPA proposes adding to the federal Superfund National Priorities List.

March 9, 2004
Evansville neighborhood on list of new Superfund cleanup sites
Associated Press, Evansville, IN
The Environmental Protection Agency has added an Evansville neighborhood whose soil contains dangerously high levels of lead to the list of Superfund cleanup sites. Evansville's Jacobsville neighborhood was one of 11 sites on the federal agency's proposed Superfund list released Monday.

March 9, 2004
Not-So-Superfund; Congress must rebuild its fiscal muscle
Editorial, The Philadelphia Inquirer
Polluters should pay to clean up their toxic messes. Americans have been pretty clear on that.  But Congress has gradually let much of polluters' responsibility melt away. The Superfund, once a self-replenishing pot of $4 billion, went bankrupt last fall. Now taxpayers are stuck with the bill for cleaning up  America 's abandoned, poisoned land. 

March 9, 2004
Heidelberg Twp. neighborhood proposed for Superfund program
By Mike Urban, Reading Eagle
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Monday proposed that part of a Heidelberg Township neighborhood containing chemical-laden soil be added to the agency's Superfund program for cleanup of toxic waste contamination.

March 10, 2004  
Graham, Nelson Want To Restore Superfund Corporate Tax
By Mike Salinero, Tampa Tribune, FL
TALLAHASSEE - U.S. senators from states with toxic waste sites will try this week to move toward reinstatement of a corporate tax to replenish the shrinking Superfund trust fund. The fund was created in 1980 to clean up the worst abandoned toxic waste sites in the country. There are 51 such sites in Florida, including the defunct Stauffer phosphate processing plant in Tarpon Springs.

March 10, 2004
It may take a long time to clean up Jacobsville
By Jessica Wehrman, Courier & Press Washington bureau
Although Evansville's Jacobsville neighborhood has dangerous levels of lead in its soil, it may be years before the site is cleaned up, say environmental groups that track Superfund cleanups.

March 10, 2004
U.S. Senate eyes Superfund tax renewal
By Jennifer McKee, Missoulian State Bureau
HELENA - Plans to reinstate a tax on industry to pay for Superfund hold special interest in Montana, where cleanup at one of the nation's top sites - Libby - has been slowed for lack of funds.

March 10, 2004
Baucus supports reviving tax on polluting industry
By Jennifer McKee- IR State Bureau
HELENA - A plan expected to be released today to reinstate a tax on polluting industry to pay for the national Superfund program has special interest in Montana, where cleanup of one of the nation's top Superfund priorities - the town of Libby - has been slowed for lack of funds.

March 10, 2004
Conservation projects lose with budget deficit. If only the piggy bank were always full
Portland Press Herald: Editorial
Environmental groups want Congress to fully restore the Conservation Trust Fund in the 2005 fiscal budget to ensure there's plenty of money available for key environmental and natural resources projects.

March 10, 2004
Superfund program should be continued
Lewiston Sun Journal: Editorial
dfarmer@sunjournal.com
After years of underfunding, the Superfund program is going broke.

March 13, 2004
Superfund tax rejection may delay Maine toxic site cleanups
By Misty Edgecomb, Bangor Daily News, ME
The cleanup of once-toxic sites such as Eastland Woolen Mill in Corinna and the Callahan Mine in Brooksville could be delayed with the failure this week of a federal effort to make chemical manufacturers pay to clean up toxic pollution at Superfund sites.

March 15, 2004
Make the polluters pay
Palm Beach Post Editorial, FL
The toxic-cleanup news is better in South Florida than in Washington, where the Senate on Thursday refused to reinstate the Superfund polluter-pays tax. Crying "energy crisis," opponents said that oil and chemical firms should not have to pay into the fund, or that companies should pay only for sites at which they are proved to have been directly responsible.

March 15, 2004
Replenish The Superfund
Roanoke Times & World News, VA)
Under the Bush administration, the Superfund has become a super bust.

March 15, 2004
This favor may backfire for industry
Missoula Missoulian, MT
It may be a pay-now-or-pay-more-later proposition for industries opposed to pollution trust fund.

March 15, 2004
Replenish the Superfund 
Roanoke Times, VA
President Bush should follow precedent and urge Congress to reinstate the polluter tax to pay for environmental cleanup. 

March 15, 2004
Better water laws are needed
Poughkeepsie Journal, NY
Supporters of better water protection in Dutchess County suffered one setback last week -- but saw a glimmer of hope at a public hearing held by the county Board of Health. 

March 16, 2004
Crippling Superfund cleanups
Fort Wayne Journal Gazette, IN
The impending sale of a former toxic waste site in  Fort Wayne would not have been possible without cleanup help from the federal government. But money for cleaning up future sites is gone and needs to be restored.

March 18, 2004
Love Canal Declared Clean, Ending Toxic Horror
By Anthony DePalama, The New York Times
Two decades after Love Canal became the first polluted site on the newly created Superfund list, federal officials announced yesterday that the neighborhood that epitomized environmental horror in the late 1970's was clean enough to be taken off the list. Hundreds of families were evacuated from the working-class Love Canal section of Niagara Falls, N.Y., after deadly chemicals started oozing through the ground into basements and a school, burning children and pets and, according to experts, causing birth defects and miscarriages. The neighborhood had been built on a 19th-century canal where a toxic mix of more than 80 industrial chemicals had been buried.

March 18, 2004
First Superfund site,  Love Canal , now said to be clean
USA Today
NIAGARA FALLS ,  N.Y. (AP) — Cleanup work at a former chemical dump that gave rise to the Superfund list has been completed, more than two decades after the environmental disaster forced the evacuation of an entire neighborhood, federal officials said.  The Environmental Protection Agency said Wednesday that the  Love Canal should be taken off the Superfund list now that its cleanup work is done. 

March 18, 2004
EPA proposes removing Love Canal from Superfund
By Carolyn Thompson, AP Writer, News-Herald, FL
NIAGARA FALLS, N.Y. -- Federal environmental officials on Wednesday proposed removing Love Canal from the Superfund list it gave rise to more than 20 years ago.The Environmental Protection Agency said cleanup work has been completed at the site, which taught an unnerving lesson about hazardous waste when chemicals buried in an abandoned canal seeped into homes built around it.

March 18, 2004
Love Canal cleanup finished EPA says (pdf)
By Andrew Z. Galarneau, News Niagara Bureau, Buffalo News
Niagara Falls - Saying that cleanup work at Love Canal has ended the U.S. Environmental Protection has proposed removing the Niagara Falls toxic landmark from its Superfund list, potentially closing a chapter in the nation's environmental history.

March 19, 2004
EPA: Job finished at Love Canal
The former chemical dump that inspired the Superfund should be taken off the list of worst sites, the agency said.
By Carolyn Thompson, AP, Philadelphia Inquirer
NIAGARA FALLS, N.Y. - Cleanup work at a former chemical dump that gave rise to the Superfund list has been completed, more than two decades after the environmental disaster forced the evacuation of an entire neighborhood, federal officials said.

March 20, 2004
Love Canal edges toward normalcy  - As Love Canal is taken off the federal Superfund list, disputes still rage over whether the area is fully detoxified
By Bill Michelmore News Niagara Bureau
NIAGARA FALLS - For many former residents it was a nightmare, but for current residents it was a real estate bargain. It was the catalyst for the federal government's Superfund program, which has cleaned up more than 600 hazardous-waste sites nationwide since it was created in 1983 and now has an annual budget of $1.4 billion.

March 21, 2004
Superfund cleanup - live and close-up
In Toms River, the public can view the removal of drums of chemical waste.
By Jacqueline L. Urgo, Philadelphia Inquirer
TOMS RIVER , N.J. -  From a 20-foot pit of deep-orange earth on the sprawling Ciba-Geigy Chemical Corp. grounds, 35,000 rusted drums containing chemical waste are being pulled out one by one.

March 23, 2004
Polluters, not taxpayers, should foot the bill
By Carl Pope, Maimi Hearld.com
Earlier this month, the U.S. Senate missed a golden opportunity to hold polluters accountable for cleaning up their toxic messes under the Superfund toxic-waste cleanup program. The measure, an amendment to the Budget Bill to reinstate the ''polluter pays'' fees, lost 44-52, but gained strong bipartisan support. Florida Senators Bob Graham and Bill Nelson voted yes because they recognize the importance of cleaning up toxic-waste sites. This vote increases the pressure on the Bush administration to put the health and safety of communities before corporate polluters.

March 23, 2004
Sierra Club ads target Bush on toxic waste cleanup
By Sam Hananel, Associated Press
WASHINGTON - The Sierra Club has launched a new series of ads charging the Bush administration with failing to make corporations clean up abandoned toxic waste sites.

March 28, 2004
Pollution and the Slippery Meaning of 'Clean'
By Anthony DePalma, The New York Times
When the outrage over Love Canal was at its height, more than 20 years ago, hundreds of families had to be evacuated from their homes after 21,000 tons of chemicals buried beneath them started oozing into their basements and contaminating their groundwater. 

March 29, 2004
The lessons of Love Canal
All these years later, a mother is back urging Congress to strengthen the Superfund and clean up toxic waste
The Oregonian, Editorial
L ois Gibbs' work ought to be done. The federal government has just declared Love Canal, where Gibbs organized her neighbors 25 years ago to demand the cleanup of toxic waste that sickened their families, safe and ready to be taken off the nation's Superfund list.

April 1, 2004
12 defendants settle case, agree to clean up N.Y. Superfund site
 Waste News
OYSTER BAY, N.Y. -- The federal government has settled a civil environmental case with 12 defendants to clean up the Liberty Industrial Finishing Superfund site in Oyster Bay, N.Y.

April 3, 2004
Funds Would Be Super
Editorial - Los Angeles Times
For several years, the infamous Love Canal has been about as clean as it's going to get. The houses adjacent to the upstate New York site have found new buyers more than two decades after toxic chemicals dumped there by industry after World War II seeped into houses and a school, leading to the creation of the Superfund to clean up this and other badly contaminated sites across the nation. The Love Canal toxins have long been capped and vented; all that remains is continued monitoring.

April 8, 2004
Ex-federal Superfund official indicted
Associated Press
LOS ANGELES (AP) — The former head of the federal Superfund environmental cleanup program was indicted on charges she concocted an elaborate scheme to defraud a client who had hired her consulting firm to clean up a contaminated site. Rita Marie Lavelle, 57, who served as an assistant administrator in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency during the Reagan administration, was charged Wednesday with wire fraud and making false statements to federal agents. Robert Cole, 67, also was indicted for wire fraud.

April 14, 2004
Earth Day has seen great gains, but Earth can do better
By Erin Kelly, USA Today
WASHINGTON — When the first Earth Day was observed in 1970, raw sewage was being dumped into rivers and lakes, smog forced California schoolchildren indoors at recess, and the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland was so fouled with oil and industrial waste that it had caught fire.

April 15, 2004
On Tax Day, Taxpayers Paying for Polluters' Clean-Up
Greenwatch Today
As Americans stream into post offices across the country today to mail their tax returns, their task will be made even less palatable when they learn that the Bush administration is now charging the public -- rather than polluters -- for the clean-up of Superfund sites. The BE SAFE Network, a joint project of several national, state, and local environmental groups, is organizing community events in 26 states to highlight how the Bush administration is using tax dollars to clean up contaminated sites, rather than follow the traditional practice of collecting fees from corporate polluters. Despite federal law mandating that the polluters should pay, the public is underwriting toxic cleanups.

April 15, 2004
Groups rally to reinstate tax on polluters
You make a mess, you clean it up.
The Daily Oakland Press
But environmentalists say that lesson is lost on the Bush administration, which has refused to reauthorize "polluters pay" fees that once funded toxic waste site cleanups.Now, say environmentalists, cleanups of the nation's worst toxic waste sites - including in Oakland County - are being done with general fund money.

April 15, 2004
Groups protest Superfund clean up funding
Washington Times
(UPI) -- A network of environmental groups Thursday reminded taxpayers at post offices in 25 states their dollars fund the clean up of Superfund sites. The groups said taxpayers will pay upwards of $1.27 billion for the Superfund program because the Bush administration has failed to hold corporate polluters responsible.

April 16, 2004
Superfund tax protest prompts Sununu response
By Dan Bustard, Eagle Times
CLAREMONT – A tax day protest over funding for the clean up of superfund sites in Claremont got the attention of one of New Hampshire’s U.S. senators Thursday. Sen. John Sununu, R-NH, responded to a letter dropped off at his Claremont office Thursday morning by members of CLEAR, Citizens Leading for Environmental Action and Responsibility, regarding the elimination of the tax on polluters to pay for Superfund cleanups.

April 16, 2004
Harbor cleanup nears key stage
By Aaron Nicodemus, Standard-Times
NEW BEDFORD -- The massive cleanup of New Bedford Harbor is set to reach a critical stage in September, officials from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said this week. The construction of a dewatering facility on Herman Melville Boulevard, behind the Wharf Tavern on the North Terminal waterfront, is expected to be completed in July. A desanding facility will be built by August about a mile away, on Sawyer Street.

April 16 2004
Idaho Superfund Cleanup Plan Discussed
Los Angeles Times 
Wallace, Idaho - Residents and lawmakers in the Idaho Panhandle's Silver Valley told a federal panel that a proposal to dramatically expand the Superfund cleanup is too costly and extensive, and would diminish the region's economy. U.S. Sen. Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, told a National Academy of Sciences panel Thursday that the local economy will be hurt if the cleanup is extended over the next three decades.

April 16, 2004
The Tragedy Of Tar Creek
Superfund was created to ensure that America's toxic-waste dumps got cleaned up. An inside look at one of its failures
Margot Roosevelt, Picher, OK, Time Magazine
To get a better view of the situation, John Sparkman guns his flame-red truck up a massive pile of gravel. From the summit, a lifeless brown wasteland stretches to the horizon, like a scene from a science-fiction movie. Mountains of mine tailings, some as tall as 13-story buildings, others as wide as four football fields, loom over streets, homes, churches and schools. Dust, laced with lead, cadmium and other poisonous metals, blows off the man-made hills and 800 acres of dry settling ponds. "It gets in your teeth," says Sparkman, head of a local citizens' group. "It cakes in your ears and hair. It's like we've been environmentally raped."

April 16, 2004
Superfund site selection a toxic policy mess
Raymond Keating, Special to Houston Business Journal
Superfund, the federal government program for cleaning up toxic waste sites, is back in the news. On March 8, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency proposed adding 11 sites to the Superfund program's National Priority List. Public comments will be sought before the sites are officially added.

April 20, 2004
Clean-up campaign
Hillsboro Argus, OR 
Gov. Ted Kulongoski is right about the Willamette River. Cleaning up the Little Muddy will require more than tougher enforcement by the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality. It will take government money, broad-based incentives and an aggressive educational campaign to win the attention of Oregonians.