Superfund Reform Needs Drastic Simplification

January 1995

Citation:

ELR 10008

Issue

Author

Norman W. Bernstein

Congress will be returning to Washington about the time this Dialogue is published. The Superfund reauthorization bill that did not pass in the last Congress is the natural starting point for the renewed discussion in this Congress of Superfund's reauthorization. This Dialogue is about that upcoming reauthorization and has two purposes.

The first purpose is to educate the public and the environmental bar about some of the fundamental problems in the small print of S. 1834 and H.R. 4916, the most recent Senate and House bills. The bills are complex; the Senate version runs approximately 500 pages, the House version runs 300 pages. Many of the assumptions about the proposed legislation's content and effect are incorrect. Part of the problem is that the legislation worsened as it went through the committee process. The committee process produced legislation that if enacted, will increase costs and complexity, decrease fairness, and slow cleanups.

In 1983, Mr. Bernstein led the Enviro-Chem site Superfund settlement with EPA—the first large multiparty Superfund settlement with the Agency after the scandals that forced the Administrator from office. In 1984 and 1985, he led the first small generator cash outs anywhere in the country at the Chem-Dyne and Conservation Chemical sites. In 1988, he led the settlement of the New York landfills litigation—the first major landfills settlement in the country. In 1992, he argued United States v. Alcan Aluminum Corp., 964 F.2d 252 (3d Cir. 1992), the first case ever lost by the U.S. Department of Justice at the federal appellate level on the issue of Superfund joint and several liability. Mr. Bernstein is a cum laude graduate of the Columbia University School of Law and a former editor of the Columbia Law Review. He chairs several Superfund site steering committees, and he recently established his own law firm in Washington, D.C.