Published in the Home News Tribune
By JOSEPH PICARD
STAFF WRITER
Reps. Frank Pallone Jr. and Donald Payne respectively, said yesterday they will support federal legislation to strengthen financing for the Superfund, the program that covers the cleanup of the nation's worst hazardous-waste sites.
They joined other lawmakers and environmentalists in Washington to announce their support in response to proposed partisan legislation that would reduce financing for the federal Environmental Protection Agency's National Priorities List, or Superfund.
New Jersey leads the nation in Superfund sites, with more than 115.
"We are here to demonstrate that we stand firm in our belief that the Superfund program is working and should not be changed substantially," said Pallone, D-6th Dist. "However, if the Superfund program is going to be changed at all, it must be strengthened."
Pallone; Payne, D-10th Dist., and the others held a news conference in the Rayburn House Office Building, outside the hearing room where the Republican-controlled House Commerce Committee's Finance and Hazardous Materials Subcommittee met to discuss GOP-sponsored legislation that would reform the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act, which established the Superfund, and restrict spending for several Superfund activities.
Republicans contend the Superfund process is too slow and its bureaucracy wasteful. The Clinton administration and most Democrats respond that the program works and that the proposed GOP legislation would gut it through budget cuts.
Pallone, whose constituency includes about half of Middlesex County from Dunellen southeast to Old Bridge, and Payne, whose district includes Linden, Rahway and a portion of Elizabeth, were joined by Democratic Congress members from Georgia, Massachusetts, Illinois, California, Colorado and New York, as well as representatives from the Sierra Club, the Environmental Defense Fund, the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Public Interest Research Group.
They announced their own bill, called the Children's Protection and Community Cleanup Act of 1999. Pallone said the bill soon would be introduced in the House.
According to the Democrats and environmentalists, their proposed legislation would strengthen the Superfund law in several ways. They said it would: Increase penalties for those who pollute intentionally. Require that cleanup standards protect children's health.
Inform people living near hazardous-waste sites of their condition. Require that sites in economically deprived areas receive as much cleanup attention as sites in more prosperous locales. Make polluters responsible for damage to natural resources. Allow citizens to sue to recover damages. Ensure that "remediated" land is clean enough to be used again.
Hold the federal government to the same standards of responsibility for polluted sites and their cleanup.
"We demand that human health and environmental protections remain in the Superfund program and that responsibility for cleaning up these sites rests with the polluters, not the taxpayers," Pallone said.
Source: Asbury Park Press
Published: September 22, 1999
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