Super (bailout) fund.

Superfund is a program established by the E.P.A. to remediate toxic waste sites. $25 million of tax payer’s money is going to the Superfund site in Vineland, New Jersey. This is coming directly from the economic bailout stimulus plan. There is about 54 acres of soil and land that are still in need of dredging and cleaning. The company that was previously on the site responsible for the toxic waste is a pesticide manufacturing plant. The target pollutant left over by the plant that Superfund is after recovering and sending to landfills is arsenic. The E.P.A. says that the amount of arsenic in the area still poses a threat to human life. It is poisonous, and has been known to cause numerous types of cancer, and also kill those who ingest it. The arsenic has also entered the local water table and $120 million dollars has already been spent over the past couple of years to clean and treat millions of tons and gallons of soil and water.

The pesticide company that put the arsenic in the surrounding area was not responsible for funding the remediation of the site. It is deemed an orphan site, which means no one company or firm are required to fund the sites clean up. Superfund’s tax funded budget was dismantled in 1995. This led to many projects to fail to completely clean up the site due to the lack of funds and labor available. Since no one company is in charge of payment, the entire financial support for the cleanup is relied upon by the public. There are currently over 1300 Superfund sites throughout the U.S. Many companies are aware of how much cleanup projects like this could potentially cost them and opt to dump their chemicals anyway. They can use their influence and power to persuade local governments that they were not responsible, or just pack up and leave, in attempts to burden the public with the cleanup costs, knowing that it would be cheaper than properly disposing of the toxic substances in the first place.

This promotes companies to dump waste and toxic substances, which is typically much cheaper for the company, than disposing of the harmful waste properly. These wastes can contaminate the ground water and have many negative effects on the surrounding wildlife, human population, and can sometimes destroy the ecosystem. This illegal dumping also cost the U.S. more than $31 billion in tax payers money, including you and me.