CERCLA

The Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA) or Superfund was enacted on December 11, 1980.  The purpose of CERCLA is to address problems associated with abandoned hazardous waste sites.  The major provisions of CERCLA include the following: “established prohibitions and requirements concerning closed and abandoned hazardous waste sites, provided for liability of persons responsible for releases of hazardous waste at these sites and established a trust fund to provide for cleanup when no responsible party could be identified,”(CERCLA overview, 2011).  CERCLA is used today to find and cleanup sites which pose a threat to the community, such as the Brick Township Landfill site in Brick, New Jersey. 

Moreover, CERCLA was created in response to a growing environmental contamination problem in the United States.  The original Act of CERCLA is much less complex in 1980 than it has come to today.  In 1986 CERCLA was first amended by the Superfund Amendments and Reauthorization Act (SARA) which added many provisions to the original act and clarified the unclear sections.  CERCLA was amended again in 2002 with the addition of the Small Business Liability Relief and Brownfields Revitalization Act which helped to fix the issue of the innocent party and to help to make clear who is responsible for the affected site.  All of the provisions made to CERCLA were done to help the process of cleanup of inactive hazardous waste sites and the correct distribution of cleanup costs among the parties who dumped the waste at these sites (Sullivan, 2009). 

In addition, the most important feature of CERCLA is the Hazardous Substance Superfund which was used by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in cleaning up hazardous waste sites.  The Superfund was created by the taxes that were imposed upon the petroleum and chemical industries, the environmental tax on corporations and general tax revenue contributed to the Superfund.  The Superfund is used by the EPA to pay for cleanup and enforcement costs and certain natural resource damages and claims of private parties.  Private parties are paid through the Superfund when the EPA approves the cleanups they have performed or when they are unable to receive payment from the facility owner or operator.  However, the Superfund may not be used to finance the remediation of federal facilities (Sullivan, 2009). 

Furthermore, a very important part of CERCLA’s response procedures is the National Priorities List (NPL).  The NPL is part of the National Contingency Plan and is updated annually. CERCLA requires that the EPA formulates a list each year using specific criteria for determining priority sites among the various releases or threatened releases throughout the nation.  The criteria used are based on public health, welfare, and the environment and taking into account factors such as the extent of the population at risk, the hazard potential of the facility’s hazardous substances, the potential for contamination of drinking water supplies, and the threat to ambient air.  Using these criteria, the EPA scores and ranks sites for possible placement on the NPL (Sullivan, 2009).