WASHINGTON -- The Superfund toxic waste cleanup program, crippled by delays in passing a new law to replenish its budget, is so low on funds it soon will have to start shutting down, EPA Administrator Lee Thomas warns.
The first phase of the shutdown will come as early as next month, unless Congress agrees quickly on either a full five-year reauthorization of the program or a short-term financing package, Thomas said Wednesday.
He told reporters he would be willing, as a last resort, to accept short-term funding to ensure the program would be kept alive.
In the past, Thomas has opposed stopgap financing, saying without the knowledge that long-term funds are available, it would be difficult to plan cleanup projects that require more than a few months to complete.
But Wednesday, he said he is pessimistic about chances of speedy passage of a long-term measure, which has stymied lawmakers for months.
'Things are really getting bad,' Thomas said. 'We're going to have to start on a shutdown the middle of next month.'
In a letter to Thomas, Rep. James Florio, D-N.J., who authored the law that created Superfund in 1980, said the EPA administrator was partly to blame for past congressional failures to authorize short-term funding.
'I am hopeful that your change in position will help us to pursue efforts to stabilize the program over the short term,' Florio wrote, recommending a six-month funding extension to preserve the program while lawmakers continue work on the five-year bill.
Technically, Superfund expired last Sept. 30, the end of fiscal 1985, and the Environmental Protection Agency lost its authority to collect special taxes on industry to finance the program. Thomas halted some work last summer in an effort to stretch the program's money into this spending year.
Congress tried to pass a new Superfund law last fall, but lawmakers have been unable to agree on legislation to extend the program. A major sticking point is how to finance the government attack on dangerous waste dumps.
Only about $140 million remains in the Superfund budget, and more than half that is needed to pay employees' salaries, Superfund chief Winston Porter said.
The shortage of money means the agency will shift its remaining funds to cover emergency action and begin sending notices in mid-February to contractors, notifying them that their contracts may be terminated within a few weeks, Porter said.
'We're really doing severe damage to the structure of the program,' Thomas said. 'It's the framework of the program that we're going to have to start taking down.'
According to a scenario outlined by the agency, some contracts could be cut off as early as March. In April, emergency removal funds would drop to $1 million a month -- one-fifth of last year's monthly level and enough to handle just three or four emergencies a month -- and the 400 cleanup projects already in progress would begin to run out of money.
By September, the emergency removal fund would be empty, there would be no money to enforce Superfund regulations and about 1,500 employees would be laid off.
