Sen. Corey Booker (D-N.J.) led a group of three Democratic senators on July 29 in introducing legislation that would reinstate an expired excise tax on industries that employ certain hazardous substances, and use the funds to support Superfund cleanups nationwide.
Until expiring in 1995, excise taxes collected by the federal government financed the Superfund Trust Fund, which supported efforts to clean up abandoned sites contaminated with dangerous pollutants. According to Sen. Booker and the bill’s cosponsors (New Jersey’s Robert Menendez and California’s Barbara Boxer), the lack of direct funding has slowed EPA’s pace of cleaning up these contaminated sites – some of which put drinking water sources at risk.
The “Superfund Polluter Pays Restoration Act” (S. 2679) would reinstate the excise tax on polluting industries, index the taxes for inflation in the future, and make proceeds available for use by EPA outside of the annual appropriations process. The bill would also expand industries covered by the taxes to include producers of tar sands oil and shale gas.
Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) has introduced Superfund tax reinstatement legislation in the House of Representatives for the past several years, but it has not advanced through that chamber. AMWA has supported similar efforts in the past as a means of generating more resources to cleanup threats to local water supplies.