Superfund Trust Fund Case Study

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Establishing a new trust fund is the only way to bring back the program to full productivity. The new fund should be managed directly from the EPA instead of the overall federal government. The EPA should have authority to issue eligibility for Waivers of Liability to anyone purchasing property that has been contaminated. Private parties should be able to make donations to the Superfund Trust Fund, and there should be financial support from the federal government as well. If developers decide to purchase land with possible contamination they should not be penalized but instead, have an environmental site assessment completed by the EPA before purchase, and if the risk is there for hazard then the land will remain vacant. This protects all …show more content…
In effect, it is a record establishing that the developer has met the requirements for BFPP status. If the developer stops the process here, the Certi case provides strong evidence to present in court that he or she has undertaken AAI, if the developer must defend himself or herself against an EPA cleanup enforcement or contribution action. The developer, however, now has a further step he or she can take to ensure immunity. If, after receiving the Certificate, the developer makes a minimum contribution to the Superfund Cleanup Trust Fund— in effect, a settlement with EPA to limit his or her liability for any future discovery of hazardous releases previously occurring on site—he or she would be granted a Waiver of Liability. With so much land accounted for as contaminated it will continue being a waste unless there is funding to start an action. The steps in the clean-up process are no longer a system but repetitive use of the first steps. Sites are only being assessed and recognized as a brownfield. There is no initiative to start the clean-up process simply because there is no money to go through with the remediation. With this plan, there can be more money introduced to the fund to help create usable land and community areas. The Superfund projects were too many areas for the given funds and as a result, have slowed down the process if not halted progress on more than 100,000 sites. Similarly, the revenue streams contributed annually to the Superfund Cleanup Trust Fund would be a function of the number and size of commercial real estate transactions made each year. It is expected, however, that these amounts would be significantly larger than the current level of appropriations allocated to Superfund cleanup actions, and the funding would, in effect, be entirely voluntary on the part of the contributors. Essentially, this proposal provides potential redevelopers of brownfield sites a mechanism by which they can reduce or eliminate the

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