Hazardous Waste and Superfund: Few Changes and Little Progress

• Author: Joel A. Mintz
• Pages: 321-333

Chapter 21

Hazardous Waste and Superfund: Few

Changes and Little Progress

Joel A. Mintz

The disposal and release of hazardous wastes and other toxic chem-

icals into the natural environment remains an immense problem in the

United States and throughout the world. According to the U.S. Envi-

ronmental Protection Agency (EPA), in 2004 (the last year for which

current data is available) roughly 81.5 million pounds of persistent

bioaccumulative toxic compounds—which EPA has identified as

“priority chemicals”—were released to the environment in the form

of hazardous wastes.1This staggering rate of discharge represents a

substantial increase over the preceding year,2and these released haz-

ardous wastes pose a particular threat to human health and the natural

environment. As EPA has noted:

Existing releases of these chemicals often linger in some form for

decades, repeatedly cycling among land, water, and air, being car-

ried airborne across state and national borders, depositing on soils

and water bodies, settling in sediments, and being consumed by and

stored in fat reserves of living organisms. Continued use of these

chemicals increases these unwelcome global reservoirs.3

With particular attention to the years since 2002, this chapter assays

the ways in which U.S. domestic laws pertaining to hazardous waste

have or have not conformed to norms of sustainable development. Af-

ter defining sustainability as it pertains to hazardous waste, and ex-

ploring some critical features of current U.S. law and policy respect-

ing its remediation and management, the chapter argues that, notwith-

standing past progress, significant legal changes are needed to move

the country toward sustainable development in this crucial area. These

reforms must include new legislation to mandate specific, phased de-

creases in the volume of hazardous waste generated at industrial facil-

ities. The reforms must also encompass replenishment of the

Superfund trust fund through renewal of the Superfund petroleum tax

and modification of the statute’ssecured creditor exemption. Ratifica-

tion of the Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Move-

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