Here’s How We Know That Vermont’s New Climate Law Will Work

The
Superfund worked by levying taxes on the most toxic industries, assessing the
most toxic sites to prioritize, and forcing those directly responsible for
specific toxic waste (often multiple parties) to pay for its cleanup. It was a
success, especially in its early years under Reagan and Bush, cleaning up Love
Canal, as well as another high-profile site in Kentucky. Over the program’s
lifetime, more than 450 toxic sites have been cleaned up, in some cases
restored to green space, including baseball diamonds, soccer fields, wetlands,
bird sanctuaries, and, in Pensacola, Florida, even a model airplane park. A 2011 study found that Superfund cleanups reduced birth defects by
20 to 25 percent (though many experts do rightly question whether anyone really
should be living near former hazardous waste sites, even if they’ve been
declared “clean”).

By the 1990s,
the politics of the environment had become more polarized between parties, and
there were some cuts
to the Superfund under the right-wing, Newt Gingrich–led Congress. Though
polluters found responsible for specific pollution at specific sites still had
to pay, Republicans eliminated a tax on oil and chemical companies that had
been important to the fund’s health. These cuts meant that if no guilty parties
could be found, the cleanup had to be paid for by a fund created by taxpayer
money—which was not consistently replenished; federal funding for the Superfund
was halved
between 1999 and 2013.