Word: superfund
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ENVIRONMENT: Superfund's False Promises...
...reason for the stillness is the neighborhood's proximity to something called the Brio Superfund site, a place that once housed two waste-disposal plants and now contains a witches' brew of toxic effluviums. Southbend's wells have been polluted by such chemicals as chloroform and xylene, while a black, oozing tar has bubbled upward into driveways and garages. Residents say air contaminants, such as trichloroethane, have been responsible for personal tragedies. Among them has been a rash of birth defects: in one four-month period, 11 deformed children were born; other children suffered serious heart and reproductive-organ problems...
Fully a decade after Brio was nominated as an official cleanup site, it stands as the pre-eminent example of what has gone wrong with the extensive government cleanup program known as Superfund. Though nearly $1 billion has vanished in litigation, damages and other costs, virtually nothing has been done to the Brio mess in the way of actual cleanup. The pattern has been regularly repeated nationwide: instead of redressing the worst toxic-dumping problems, the program has become a vast legal nightmare, one that has turned interested parties against one another in a frenzy of litigation...
...environmental pollution at all the bases that are being shut down. The President didn't put a price tag on this, but Pentagon insiders say the cost of this gesture will be enormous -- more than $20 billion over the next decade. Nine of the bases slated for closure are Superfund toxic-waste sites, meaning they are among the most contaminated areas in America. There are also more than 500 less polluted sites on these bases, contaminated with toxic pollutants, radioactive substances or unexploded munitions...
...problems -- and costs -- have been aggravated by years of neglect. In 1978 President Jimmy Carter instructed the military to comply with environmental legislation, but the order was not enforced. Although Congress in 1980 passed the Superfund law, which made private polluters responsible for cleaning up hazardous wastes, the departments of Defense and Energy were left largely self-regulated. Increasingly, local communities, appalled at revelations about military pollution, clamored for information about what was going on in their neighborhoods and demanded that the Pentagon be made accountable. Only in September did Congress finally pass an act that puts federal facilities under...