COMMENTARY — A not-so-Superfund

The Superfund program in the U.S. has been under fire for some time, and the heat may be turned up in a new book that is expected to be published in 1996.

The manuscript, tentatively titled Moving Yard Dirt: A Superfund Super Fiasco, is currently under review by specialists. In it, author Peter Samuel scrutinizes the Superfund program,

focusing on soil-lead cleanup. Samuel examines the risks of lead, including possible exaggerations of the contamination problem, and calls for up-front risk assessment to avoid wasted dollars.

Details of the book were released in the summer issue of Mining Voice, the magazine of the National Mining Association.

Before he began writing the work, Samuel, a freelance journalist, interviewed individuals from all sides of the Superfund program, including city and local governments, companies and consultants.

He visited 20 Superfund sites in 10 states, and found communities adversely affected by the program. The book includes stories of slow, costly cleanups, properties that plummet in value as a result, and lenders who avoid Superfund-targeted areas. He speculates further that, in some cases, the cleanup may not have been necessary.

According to Samuel, the real threat of lead poisoning for American children is the presence of old, peeling paint in inner city housing. But he points out that these areas may be harder to identify and less lucrative to “raid” than mining towns.

Moving Yard Dirt will doubtless be of interest to the mining companies and citizens’ groups that have publicly questioned the technical merits of some of Superfund’s programs, as well as the agency’s spiralling costs and how the money is spent.

The issue is particularly timely in that the Superfund program has recently taken some flack for its work at the Summitville mine site in Colorado. Mining industry organizations, as well as citizens’ groups, have questioned the technical soundness of some of the work carried out at the site, and the fact that costs for moving tailings and waste rock have, in some cases, been several times higher than in the private sector.

While there is no question that cleanup work is required at a number of old mines and industrial sites, the program for doing so should be cost-effective and based on good science. Perhaps the time has come to consider privatizing these programs.