The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has a statutory obligation to begin 175 Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA) cleanups by October 1989, and 200 more CERCLA cleanups by October 1991.¹ If EPA is to meet these deadlines, it must negotiate on a truly massive scale with potentially responsible parties (PRPs), to ensure private cleanups at many sites.² Even so, EPA has generally insisted on provisions in CERCLA consent decrees calling for draconian stipulated penalties and one-sided dispute resolution procedures. This insistence by EPA has chilled the desire of PRPs to enter into negotiated settlements. Recently, however, EPA has incorporated better-reasoned provisions into the consent decree entered for the Bayou Sorrel site in Louisiana,³ and if EPA is willing to adopt a similar posture in other sites around the country, the rate of private cleanup could be measurably improved.