Filed Under: Environmental Issues | New York City | Land Use | Public Health | Solid Waste

Hazardous WasteToday's inactive hazardous waste sites are the products of decades of unregulated disposal practices in the United States. Prior to 1980, there were no federal or state laws controlling the disposal of hazardous industrial wastes, and it was common practice to dispose of contaminated waste in landfills and surface water bodies without using measures to prevent contamination of surrounding soils and groundwater. Now the country is saddled with the responsibility, and the costs, to clean up thousands of these abandoned contaminated sites. Depending on the degree of contamination, these sites are handled by federal or state cleanup programs, or are classified as brownfields. New York City is no exception, playing host to many Superfund and brownfield sites in varying stages of cleanup. Superfund Programs Federal: Prompted by the Love Canal toxic waste disaster in upstate New York in the 1970's, Congress enacted the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act (CERCLA) in 1980. Commonly referred to as Superfund, the EPA-administered law required the listing and prioritization of the nation's most seriously contaminated inactive hazardous waste sites and established a remediation program. The main principle of the Superfund law is that polluters, not taxpayers, should pay for cleanup costs – a considerable challenge given the estimated $14 billion required for Superfund cleanup costs over the next decade. Many polluters have used whatever resources they have to avoid paying their dues, resulting in slow progress of Superfund cleanup sites. The government levies a special business tax to pay for cleanups where no responsible parties can be found. There are 2 federal Superfund sites currently listed in New York City. The first site is the Radium Chemical Company in Woodside, Queens. The second is the Hudson River General Electric site. Although located in Hudson Falls, 50 miles north of Albany, the PCB contamination extends along the Hudson River into New York Harbor. Information about these sites is available on the EPA web site, www.epa.gov. New York State: Burdened by the sheer volume of abandoned hazardous waste sites in New York State that are not addressed by the federal program, the state legislature established its own Superfund program in 1979 to supplement the federal program. Like the federal law, the state program imposes responsibility not only on the major polluters of a site but on the widest possible range of responsible parties. The State Legislature and Governor passed a bill in the fall of 2003 that reauthorized and refinanced the State Superfund program, allowing for the cleanup of seriously contaminated sites. The legislation reforms and refinances a Superfund program that had been plagued with difficulties for years. Now $120 million a year will be pumped into the program. Instead of the case-by-case process previously used by the Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) to evaluate the sites, clear and strict standards have been put in place. The new Superfund law should ensure that New York has among the highest cleanup standards in the nation and retains the ‘polluter pays’ philosophy. The law allows for the cleanup of hazardous substance sites, in addition to hazardous waste sites, which have been excluded from the Superfund programs for years. In New York City, the NYS Superfund program currently lists 38 hazardous waste disposal sites. By borough, the numbers are: Bronx - 2; Brooklyn - 9; Manhattan - 1; Queens - 17; Staten Island - 9. Information about these sites can be obtained from the Department of Environmental Conservation's Division of Environmental Remediation (http://www.dec.state.ny.us/) Parties Involved: Government: Federal: Environmental Protection Agency; State: New York State Legislature, Department of Environmental Conservation; City: Office of Environmental Coordination; Department of Environmental Protection, Bureau of Environmental Compliance. Advocates: Citizens Environmental Coalition, New York Public Interest Research Group, Atlantic Chapter of the Sierra Club, Natural Resources Defense Council, Environmental Defense, New York Conservation Education Fund.