U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), seeking her party’s nomination for president, on Wednesday proposed reinstating corporate taxes to pay for cleanup of Superfund sites contaminated by hazardous wastes.
The measure is among a list of proposals in the candidate’s new environmental justice plan.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency lists more than 1,300 Superfund properties on its National Priorities List for remediation, according to Warren.
“So-called ‘orphan’ toxic waste clean-ups were originally funded by a series of excise taxes on the petroleum and chemical industries,” her plan says. “But thanks to Big Oil and other industry lobbyists, when that tax authority expired in 1995 it was not renewed. Polluters must pay for the consequences of their actions – not leave them for the communities to clean up. I’ll work with Congress to reinstate and then triple the Superfund tax, generating needed revenue to clean up the mess.”
A number of properties overseen by the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management are on the EPA’s Superfund site list. These include: three areas at the Hanford Site, a former plutonium production complex in Washington state; the Oak Ridge Reservation in Tennessee; and the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory.
Also on the list, with direct oversight by the EPA, is the West Lake Landfill in Missouri. However, the cost of cleanup of the radioactively contaminated portions of the Superfund site are being borne by three “potentially responsible parties”: the Energy Department, Bridgeton Landfill LLC, and Cotter Corp.
