A Boost for a Cleanup

The prospects of cleaning up toxic dumps, a process far more complex than Congress imagined when it approved the first federal Superfund legislation five years ago, got a major boost this week when negotiators in the House of Representatives agreed on a strong bill. The measure holds the government to deadlines and cleanup standards. It deserves passage when it goes to the floor for a vote, perhaps as early as today.

Environmentalists and their congressional allies worked doggedly to secure a compromise between the strong bill that had passed the House Public Works Committee and a weaker House Energy Committee measure. Under the compromise, the Environmental Protection Agency would be directed to clean up 600 dumps by 1991 to meet health standards set by the Clean Water Act. The measure would require the agency to identify for future action 1,600 of the nation’s worst sites by 1988. The current national priority list is about half that size. The bill would give citizens living near toxic sites the right to sue polluters to force a cleanup if the EPA was not acting.

How to finance the House’s $10.1-billion program is still unresolved. By one vote, the Ways and Means Committee passed a bill that would create a value-added tax to spread the Superfund cost beyond the chemical and petroleum industries. But Rep. Thomas J. Downey (D-N.Y.) hopes to amend the bill to eliminate the value-added tax and increase the basic taxes on chemical feedstocks and crude oil to retain the “polluter pays� concept. Critics of this proposal point out that it calls for $1.58 billion from general revenues--that is, from funds subject to the uncertainties of the annual appropriations process--while the existing bill that contains the value-added proposal would need only $180 million from general revenues.

It seems fairer to spread the burden of cleaning up toxic dumps, but no matter what the House does the conference committee must wrestle with the value-added concept, which is in a Senate version of the bill. It will do so knowing that the White House wants no general tax increases and might veto the bill if it contains one.

The old Superfund law expired Sept. 30. Only emergency cleanups are being done, and those will stop soon. Congress must either extend the current taxing authority or allow the Superfund to borrow from the Treasury, with the money to be paid back from the new Superfund. Congress is finally on the right course with Superfund legislation, but it should make sure that funding continues until it finishes its work.