Milestones: A stronger ‘Superfund’ to clean toxic sites

A disaster in India amplifies a warning

Some time during the night of Dec. 2, 1984, an estimated 93,000 pounds of methyl isocyanate and other toxic gases escape from a Union Carbide chemical plant in Bhopal, India. By the next morning, several thousand people in nearby communities lose their lives after they choke on the gas and their lungs and hearts fail. More than 500,000 people are exposed.

Suddenly, questions that Americans have been asking about the chemical facilities and dumpsites near their own homes take on greater urgency: Could what happened in Bhopal happen here?

Within two years, Congress delivers a response: a stronger federal hazardous waste “Superfund” law, with new requirements that companies disclose their toxic chemical emissions — an amendment that passes by a slim margin, thanks in part to U.S. PIRG advocacy and action.

A tragedy in NY spurs action 

The original Superfund law, passed in 1980, was a response to “one of the most appalling environmental tragedies in American history.” As The New York Times reported on August 1, 1978:

Twenty five years after the Hooker Chemical Company stopped using the Love Canal [in upstate New York] as an industrial dump, 82 different compounds, 11 of them suspected carcinogens, have been percolating upward through the soil, their drum containers rotting and leaching their contents into the backyards and basements of 100 homes and a public school built on the banks of the canal.

Children returned from play at school and in their yards with burns on their hands. Miscarriages and birth defects increased. After Lois Gibbs, a Love Canal resident and mother of a young child, organized her neighbors and demanded action, New York Gov. Hugh Carey announced on Aug. 7 that the state would purchase the residents’ homes. Two years later, President Jimmy Carter signed into law the federal Superfund program, designed to clean up the nation’s worst hazardous waste sites. Yet even with an original outlay of $1.6 billion to cover costs at sites where the polluting company couldn’t pay for cleanup, the Superfund fell short.

Yet even with an original outlay of $1.6 billion, the Superfund couldn’t cover the cleanup costs for all sites. To fill the gap, state PIRGs advocated and organized for state Superfunds, winning approval in New York, Massachusetts, Missouri, Vermont and Colorado in the early 1980s.

A federal test is passed

Meanwhile, in 1983 the state PIRGs had united to form U.S. PIRG, our federal advocacy office in Washington, D.C. As Congress began debate on whether and how to reauthorize the Superfund program, Rick Hind, U.S. PIRG’s first environmental advocate, led a campaign that sought to combine the “inside game” of direct lobbying in the Capitol with the “outside game” of PIRG’s presence and grassroots action in the states.

The debate in Congress presented PIRG and other environmental champions with three major challenges: Could we win congressional approval for 1) a significant boost in toxic waste cleanup, 2) a tough requirement that polluters pay a greater share of the cost, and 3) a new “right to know” program compelling companies to disclose their toxic emissions?

These victories built momentum for the first ever state PIRG federal victory: the 1986 reauthorization of the hazardous waste Superfund law and the Toxics Release Inventory. This effort was headed by Rick Hind.

On October 17, 1986, despite earlier threats to veto the law, Reagan signs, includes $8.5 billion for cleanup, with more than a third of the funds coming from new taxes on oil and chemicals.

And even after this landmark victory, state PIRGs continued to prod for more local action. In 1987, for example, after a toxic cleanup bill stalled in the Legislature, WashPIRG and a coalition of groups put Initiative 97 on the ballot. The tough cleanup measure won approval from 56% of the voters.

About this series: PIRG, Environment America and The Public Interest Network have achieved much more than we can cover on this page. You can find more milestones of our work on toxics below. You can also explore an interactive timeline featuring more of our network’s toxics milestones.