Paying the Price for Cleanup

A new federal superfund bill is creeping toward a showdown in which the arguments are basic, simple and crucial. The Reagan Administration and some members of Congress say that the country cannot afford to spend huge amounts of money over the next five years cleaning up the most dangerous of thousands of toxic chemical dumps. Sponsors of the bill say the country cannot afford not to and we think they are right.

The bill, left for dead earlier in the session, moved out of the House Public Works and Transportation Committee on Wednesday with bipartisan support and with most of the features of the toughest of several superfund proposals intact.

The size of the budget for toxic cleanups is an important feature of the bill. Where the Reagan Administration wants to spend $5.3 billion over the next five years and the Senate wants to spend $7.5 billion, the Public Works version calls for spending $10.1 billion.

But the bill’s strongest feature is that it imposes deadlines for action on the Environmental Protection Agency. The agency has examined only a few hundred of the 850 trouble spots on its priority list. The number it has actually cleaned up can be counted on the fingers of both hands. The bill expands the list of trouble spots to 1,600 and calls for a close look at more than half of them within the next two years and actual cleanup within the five-year life of the legislation.

Government regulators fight off deadlines almost as frantically as the people they regulate. Two cases in point involve the deadlines Congress imposed for smog controls on automobiles and for improving the gasoline mileage of American cars. In both cases, the deadlines produced action.

The tougher cleanup bill is by no means assured passage. It must work its way through two more House committees--one of them Ways and Means where members must design taxes on industry to help pay for the cleanup.

Waiting for the bill on the House floor is a bill from the House Energy and Commerce Committee that, while it is not as soft on toxic seepage as some critics say it is, nevertheless is second-best to the Public Works version. That ensures a collision between two committee chairman, Rep. John D. Dingell (D-Mich.) of Energy and Commerce, who favors a smaller budget without deadlines, and Rep. Robert A. Roe (D-N.J.), whose Public Works Committee wrote the tougher bill.

If the Public Works bill makes it through Congress, the last hurdle will be the White House, where members of President Reagan’s staff have warned that he would veto a bill that included substantial new taxes.

As the showdown approaches, the best of the superfund bills obviously faces tough opposition. That is not surprising. Cleaning up the mess America has made, whether creating hubcaps or computer chips, is costly. Even the Public Works bill may not be enough. But the urgency of the task is gaining recognition. Concern over toxics that pollute the air and supplies of drinking water is no longer confined to organized environmentalists. Every new discovery of the extent of chemical pollution expands the general public concern. And next year is an election year.