Katrina lays bare Superfund woes

But they're also faced with renewed scrutiny of the whole Superfund program. The industry tax fund ran out of money when Congress refused to renew it in 1995. Assigning blame among multiple polluters and subsequent property owners has been difficult.

The Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, recently warned that companies are using bankruptcies to avoid legal responsibility. The recent round of base closings complicates things as toxic waste sites on military property get transferred to state and local governments. And some of the most challenging hazardous waste problems - the Hudson and Passaic Rivers in the East, the hard-rock mines around Butte, Mont. - are proving to be far more difficult to deal with than landfills and shuttered factories.

"Both of those kinds of sites tend to be physically huge and very challenging," says Katherine Probst of Resources for the Future, a Washington think tank. "Not only are they very expensive, it's not exactly clear what to do."

"They're very expensive, and they're very complex," says Ms. Probst, who is an expert on Superfund and other hazardous waste management programs. "It's not like capping a landfill."

Last year, several members of Congress asked the EPA's inspector general about the adequacy of funding for hazardous waste cleanup under Superfund.

In her 104-page report, EPA inspector general Nikki Tinsley wrote: "In summary, during FY 2003, limited funding prevented EPA from beginning construction at all sites or providing additional funds needed to address sites in a manner believed necessary by regional officials...."

Whether due to increasingly difficult challenges in hazardous waste cleanups or a lack of political will, the number of Superfund cleanups has slowed in recent years. Meanwhile, analyses of EPA's National Priorities List show that 1 in 4 Americans, including some 10 million children, live within four miles of a Superfund site. As has become the case along the Gulf Coast, many of those people live in low-income, largely African-American communities.

In recent years, the budget for Superfund has stayed essentially flat at about $1.5 billion a year. With inflation and new sites needing cleanup, critics say, that means a slight but steady decrease.

"The program is not getting the funding it needs," says Alex Fidis, an attorney specializing in Superfund for the US Public Interest Research Group in Washington. "The problems are still there and if anything are getting worse."

The experience with Katrina tells some observers that dealing with hazardous waste sites may need a different approach - especially in areas vulnerable to forces of nature. "There needs to be a greater emphasis on cleanups that are really cleanups and not just covering it up," says Ed Hopkins, director of environmental quality programs for the Sierra Club in Washington. "But of course that involves money."

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