By the beginning of the 106th Congress, comprehensive legislative reform of the Superfund statute had consumed six fruitless years of effort. Adopting a new approach, the Administration decided to…

Editors' Summary: The recently completed 105th Congress provided the nation with a legacy of unparalleled legislative inactivity. Few, if any, of the legislative initiatives earmarked as…

Since its creation in 1980, the Superfund program has overcome a number of obstacles. It survived embarrassing political scandals in its first few years. It endured a failure to reauthorize the…

The Sad State of the Policy Debate

Over the last decade and a half, the Superfund policy debate has assumed all the characteristics of what sociologists might call a…

Editors' Summary: For over three years, Congress has been trying to reauthorize and revise CERCLA. Reauthorization bills introduced in the 103d, 104th, and 105th Congresses have proposed…

Although the 104th Congress did not begin officially until January 4, 1995, its significance was apparent as soon as the polls closed on November 8, 1994. When the votes were tallied, Republicans…

When the 103d Congress convened on January 5, 1993, many observers believed that it would make up for the dismal environmental record of its predecessor. The 102d Congress had tried and failed to…

The demise of efforts by a broadly based coalition of stakeholders to reauthorize Superfund in the 103rd Congress leaves the legislative field open for reconsidering all the key assumptions…

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…

Editors' Summary: The Clinton Administration's proposed Superfund amendments—the Superfund Reform Act of 1994 (SRA)—were introduced in both the House and Senate in early February. Steven M.…