Statements on Introduced Bills and Joint Resolutions

Floor Speech

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Mr. BOOKER. Mr. President, I rise today to introduce with my colleagues Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey, and Senator Barbara Boxer of California, the Superfund Polluter Pays Restoration Act of 2014. This bill reinstates an expired excise tax on polluting industries to help fund the cleanup of Superfund sites and restore communities back to health.

Across our Nation we have far too many un-remediated and dangerous Superfund sites sitting in our neighborhoods--properties that are literally poisoning our residents. This problem is particularly acute in my State of New Jersey, which is both the most densely populated State and the State with the most Superfund sites.

Nationwide, there are more than 1300 Superfund sites on the National Priorities List, NPL, which require long-term cleanups. The sites listed on the NPL are the most heavily contaminated in the country and are the sites that pose the greatest potential risk to public health and the environment. In the past five years, 94 new sites have been added to the NPL, but an average of only 7 have been removed each year.

Cleanup has not even begun at hundreds of these NPL sites. Officials at the Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, and the Government Accountability Office, GAO, state that the reason why cleanup is not starting at hundreds of sites, and taking so long at others, is because of the limited funding available for cleanup activities.

There are more than 11 million Americans who live within one mile of a Superfund site, and of that, 3 to 4 million are children. Studies show that children are particularly susceptible to the health hazards presented by Superfund sites. Researchers have found increased autism rates, and recently researchers found that babies born to mothers living within 1 mile of a Superfund site prior to cleanup had a 20 percent greater incidence of being born with birth defects.

The need for more funding could not be clearer.

When Congress created Superfund in 1980, it established the Superfund Trust Fund from which the EPA receives annual appropriations for Superfund cleanup activities. For 15 years, the Trust Fund received a steady source of revenue from excise taxes on crude oil and certain chemicals. Those taxes expired at the end of fiscal year 1995. The Superfund program is now operating at 40 percent of 1987 levels, which is unsustainable according to a 2010 GAO report which found that current funding levels would likely not be sufficient to meet the future needs of the Superfund program EPA officials estimate they will need 2 to 2.5 times more funding to effectively and efficiently cleanup unremediated sites.

It is unfair for the taxpayer to shoulder the burden of cleanup costs for these Superfund sites. To meet the need for additional funding and to protect the health of our families and children, Senator Menendez, Senator Boxer, and I have come together to introduce this act, aimed at holding polluting industries accountable, reducing the need to spend taxpayer dollars, and providing a steady flow of funds to the Superfund program.

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