The Environmental Protection Agency’s new administrator, Scott Pruitt, has called for a “back-to-basics” or “originalist” approach to the agency. It is unclear what he means, but in a 22 May memo he said he would prioritize the EPA’s program that handles heavily contaminated waste areas, known as “Superfund sites”.
In the memo, Pruitt heralds that under his administration, “Superfund and the EPA’s land and water cleanup efforts will be restored to their rightful place at the center of the agency’s core mission”.
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For Pruitt, the primary role of the EPA is janitorial: using taxpayer money to clean up after polluting industries. But that is neither how the EPA was originally envisaged, nor how the Superfund program was conceived.
The EPA began in 1970 as an agency charged with curbing pollution. Throughout the 1970s, Congress gave the EPA power to set limits on air pollution, regulate automobile emissions, define appropriate water treatment technology, set drinking water standards and regulate pesticides. Outside of minor provisions, this legislation was about the EPA preventing pollution, not cleaning it up.
In 1976, rising concern about uncontrolled dumping and burning of hazardous materials prompted passage of the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, which allowed the EPA to regulate hazardous waste from cradle to grave.
Unfortunately, there were already thousands of hazardous waste “graves” in existence. For decades, companies dumped hazardous waste haphazardly.