Cleaning Up the Mess: Implementation Strategies in Superfund [Hardcover]

Thomas W. Church (Author), Robert T. Nakamura (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0815714149 | ISBN-13: 978-0815714149 | Publication Date: March 1993

The federal Superfund programme for cleaning up America's inactive toxic waste sites is noteworthy not only for its enormous cost (15.2 billion dollars have been authorized so far), but also for its unique design. The legislation that created Superfund provided the Environmental Protection Agency with a diverse set of policy tools. Pre-eminent among them is a civil liability scheme that imposes responsibility for multi-million-dollar cleanups on businesses and governmental units linked - even tangentially - to hazardous waste sites. Armed with this potent policy implement, the agency can order the parties who are legally responsible for the toxic substances at a site to clean it up, with large fines and damages for failure to comply. EPA can also offer conciliatory measures to bring about voluntary, privately funded cleanup; and it can launch a cleanup initially paid for by Superfund and later force the responsible parties to reimburse the government. The authors of this book categorize those three implementation strategies as prosecution, accommodation and public works approaches. They examine six Superfund cleanups, including three regions and both "hard" and "easy" sites, to ask, "what works?". They point out that the choice of strategy involves setting priorities among Superfund's competing objectives: minimizing govenmental costs, reducing legal costs, and speeding up the cleanups. They conclude that the best implementation strategy is one that considers the context of each site and the particular priorities in each case.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 223 pages
• Publisher: Brookings Inst Pr (March 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0815714149
• ISBN-13: 978-0815714149
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.4 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,281,092 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A little dated now, but still interesting, January 1, 2006

By 

BookReader (MO USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Cleaning Up the Mess: Implementation Strategies in Superfund (Hardcover)

I found this book to be very interesting despite the fact that it was written over 10 years ago. The discussion of the politics/strategies employed by the individual EPA regions was particularly fascinating. It covers the frustrations of dealing with Region V, the bean counting game, and other facets of Superfund work that you may have discussed with coworkers but rarely find mentioned in books. It consists largely of case studies for sites that have approved RODs. My main frustration with the book was it did not provide a reference list so you could check to see which environmental contractors were involved in each site. I think this book will be most useful to those already working in the environmental field, as it may be hard to follow for those new to Superfund. I felt I had to review this book as the only other review was by someone who couldn't really appreciate it.

1 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars SUperfund is superboring, May 15, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Cleaning Up the Mess: Implementation Strategies in Superfund (Paperback)

This book was excessively boring and tedious with implementation strategies.I should know bc one of the authors is my teacher and he is the exact same way.do not read this book