December 11, 2003 marked the 23rd birthday of the Superfund program, but there is little to celebrate. In a dismantling of environmental protection laws, the Bush-Cheney administration allowed the Superfund Trust Fund to dry up completely, and has refused to reauthorize its funding. Created in 1980 in the wake of the Love Canal tragedy, the program established a fund for cleaning up contaminated sites. Superfund monies were made up of various taxes on corporations whose products and chemicals impact the environment, crude oil received at U.S. refineries, imported petroleum products, and court awards from parties found responsible for releasing known hazardous substances. The corporate tax that put more than $1 billion per year into the fund expired in 1995, and the Superfund ran out of money last October. Without it, taxpayers, and not the polluters, must foot the bill for continued massive clean ups.

In 1990 the Houston Chronicle reported 30 sites listed on the National Priorities List for clean up here in Texas, 29 identified as long-term health threats. Fifteen of those sites were in Houston and the surrounding area. As of December, Harris County alone has 11 Federal and 6 State Superfund sites. Twenty-six more Houston sites and an additional 32 in surrounding counties are currently being considered for addition to the Priorities List. The constantly increasing number of sites presents an ongoing threat to families in Houston, Harris County, and neighboring counties. Twenty-six Superfund sites have already contaminated groundwater, the drinking water source for 45% of Texans. Altogether, one in four Americans, 10 million of whom are children, lives within 4 miles of a toxic waste site that is a Superfund cleanup priority.

The Many Diversified Interests site, in the city’s 5th ward is adjacent to Bruce Elementary School, and is framed on three sides by neighborhood homes. Multiple wastes there include heavy metals, PCBs and asbestos. Mothers for Clean Air has obtained an EPA grant for a technical advisor for the community, and health assessments are under way. But the ground at 64 homes has already tested positive for heavy metals like arsenic, lead and chromium – serious known health hazards for growing children. The Crystal Chemical site, on Westpark Drive near Alief, is contaminated with arsenic and threatens 20,000 people and two public drinking water wells. The groundwater cannot be restored, and work on the site has cost $1.8 million to date. At the Geneva Industries site on Caniff Rd, 2 miles east of Hobby airport, it has already cost $23.2 million to remove 700 drums of contaminated soil, and treat and dispose of 35 million gallons of groundwater. The Sol Lynn/Industrial Transformers site on Loop 610 sits a few hundred yards from the Astrodome and Astroworld. Four city wells, four residential wells and 10,000 people live within 3 miles of the site where TCE, a cleaning solvent known to cause liver damage, contaminated groundwater and PCBs contaminated soil. Cleaning up the water has cost $1.5 million to date. How will we pay for ongoing cleanup and monitoring of these and other sites?

Each annual budget request of the Bush-Cheney administration to Congress has included drastic cuts in EPA enforcement funding and staff. Without effective funding and enforcement, dangerous chemicals continue to contaminate our air, soil and drinking water, creating more communities that may suffer the same fate and personal tragedies as residents of Love Canal, or local residents living near the Brio site, where subdivisions and schools had to be shut down.

We teach our children that they are responsible for cleaning up after themselves, and the Bush-Cheney administration should demand no less of corporate polluters. Instead, the administration is letting wealthy corporations off the hook, strapping taxpayers with the bill for cleanups, placing communities at risk, and saddling future generations with a legacy of toxic waste, disease and economic hardships. These corporations have made a profit from their products, and they are responsible for the cancer-causing wastes left behind. Paying into the Trust Fund is the right thing for them to do. Making American families pay first with their health and again with their taxes is not.