On this episode of Parts per Billion, anyone want to buy a super fun site? No, really, anyone? Anyone? Don't all rush in at once? Welcome or should I say welcome? Back to Parts per Billion, the podcast from Bloomberg Environment. As always, I'm your host, David Schultz. Let's face it, folks, sometimes businesses can be pretty dirty. Sometimes when they shut down a factory or a mine or something like that, they leave behind some pretty gross stuff, gross and toxic.
So what do you do with this? What do you do with contaminated land? Well that's where the EPA's Super Fun program comes in. For almost forty years, this program has been coming in and cleaning up contaminated sites so they can be used again. But used by who? Who actually wants to purchase a super fun site? Bloomberg Environment Sylvia Kerragnan recently did a story on the EPA's efforts to make these sites more attractive to potential buyers. And
that's not easy. A lot of times there's some really roast stuff on these sites. In fact, in one instance, a site is contaminated with something called no joke black mayonnaise. Seriously. Sylvia started off by explaining exactly what the Superfund program
is and how it works. So Congress passed a law in nineteen eighty that created this program that would clean up hazardous waste and pollutants in places like abandoned mines, landfills, factories, and the money for that would come from this trust fund called the Superfund. So in the beginning, a lot of the money and the superfund came from taxing companies that handle petroleum products and hazardous chemicals, since those often
became the pollutants that had to be cleaned up. So this was not money that came from you and me when we pay our taxes in April. This is money that came from the actual companies that dumped the gross stuff in the first place. Some of the money did come from Congress, but a big chunk of it came from the what was called the polluters Tax. So the tax worked for a little bit, but it expired at the end of nineteen ninety five, and the amount of money Congress has given to the super Fund has declined
every year since then. So it takes a long time, sometimes decades to get these sites cleaned up, just because there isn't enough money to do it quickly. So give me an example. I'm trying to think of what you know, you mentioned abandoned minds and things like that. Give me an example of what a typical superfund site is. I mean, maybe there is no such thing as a typical super fun site, but like what has happened on these locations
that made them so you know, toxic, I guess. So there's about thirteen hundred superfund sites and they're all kind of different and special in their own way. There's the Goannas Canal in New York City. That's one of them, and it's right in the middle of Brooklyn, right, that's right, and the contamination there is just sort of accumulated over I think hundreds of years of just industrial activity in the area, and it's accumulated this black Manni's what they're
calling it. It's just sort of the sludge that's sitting at the bottom of the canal and they're working on cleaning it up. And there goes my appetite, black mayonnaise. Let's let's let the listeners kind of marinate in that a little bit for a few seconds here. Yeah, So that's right in the middle of the city. There's a lot of industrial activity. This is New York City. But you know what are what are some other sites? So you also might have heard about gold King Mine in Colorado.
That's a place where a lot of wastewater associated with mining somehow left the mine and it has contaminated a lot of the rivers and water bodies sort of downstream of that mine. So that's another super fun site that it's very different from the guanas Canal, but it's similar in that there's a hazardous waste and contamination. So you know, people can purchase this isn't These aren't just sites that
EPA takes over and then the federal government owns. People can buy the land and here, but why would you want to Like, why would anyone want to buy land that has black mayonnaise on it or like mining waste? Yeah, I don't know if you want to buy something that has black mayonnaise, But there's certainly a stigma that comes from hazardous waste and cleaning up superfund sites can also be such a long process that developers and buyers just don't want to wait around for that site to be ready.
There are, however, lots of sites out there that have been cleaned up and now they're distribution centers, their office buildings. Some of them are even wildlife habitats. So the program has worked pretty well in the past, but could it be working better. In a minute, we'll get into what EPA Chief Scott pruecies in the future of super Fund, and also Sylvia offers some really valuable life advice. If it's glowing and it's green, you should probably stay away
from it. That's in just a second, But first I wanted to remind you about our hashtag parts per B. If you use that hashtag on Twitter or any other social media platform, we'll see it and respond. So don't forget that hashtag is parts per B. Once again, that's parts per b. Okay, So we're back and we're talking about toxic waste now. As you might imagine, it can be hard to get companies to purchase sites that have been contaminated by toxic waste, even if it's been mostly
cleaned up. Sylvia says, making these sites more attractive to potential buyers is a big priority at the EPA. Scott Prewitt and his super Fun team picked out about thirty sites that are, he says, ripe for redevelopment, and they made sure that the public knew about it. But if you're a company that even is remotely interested in buying or redeveloping one of those sites, the chances are that
EPA has probably gotten in touch with you already. But the real problem with hazardous waste is that companies really want to know that it's been dealt with before they buy it or develop something on top of it. So you don't want someone who's you know, digging holes to put new trees on your lot and hitting a rusty old drum with mystery liquid. I think there literally was an episode of The Simpsons where that happened, where like mister Burns was like bearing drums of mystery liquid and
it's said, mystery liquid on it. If it's glowing and it's green, you should probably stay away from it. Good advice. No, I mean that's but like in all seriousness, that's like a really big problem because in a lot of these sites, it sounds like they're really complicated. We don't totally know how the contaminants that are on the sites work, and the EPA can't necessarily give these companies one hundred percent guarantee that it's been totally cleaned up right. That is
one of the main problems. So one of the ways that EPA handles that is through what they call comfort letters, which describes comfort letters for letters which describe what a company might be liable for if it gets involved at that site. The letters are supposed to provide comfort to the company so they have a better understanding of what's
going on there before they get involved. The problem right now is that the letters don't provide any protection from liability or even like a roadmap to how that company might protect itself. So EPA is looking at improving on those Why is it so complicated, I mean, I imagine one of the reasons is because the companies that deposited the pollution I guess on these sites probably or oftentimes no longer exists, so it's sort of unclear who should
or could pay for it, right, That's right. So some of the sites where the companies that were responsible for the pollution are now defunct, those are called orphan sites, so there are no parties that EPA has been able to find who might be able to pay for cleanup at those sites. That's where it's especially expensive. And even at sites where there are companies involved in the cleanup it's hard to convince them to sort of come to the table and negotiate how much they want to pay.
The last thing I wanted to ask you about was, as you mentioned Scott Pruitt himself. You know, you mentioned he sort of selected I guess, a couple dozen sites that are sort of ripe for redevelopment. I've listened to him at talk a lot of times, and he seems to always bring this up, like super Fun is something that he's just always talking about. It seems like one
of his biggest priorities. Why do you think that is, Like, is there is this something that he feels like the was neglected in the past and you know he could do a better job. Is are there political reasons for this or their personal reasons? Like what is what's with him in super Fun? It's a good question. I've asked around about this, and it doesn't seem like Pruitt has
some special place in his heart for hazardous waste. I think this is something that maybe previous EPA administrators hadn't really focused on, and he sees us as an opportunity to make a work on the agency. That was Sylvia Kargnan, a reporter at Bloomberg Environment. For more of a reporting and toxic waste to visit our website at bnanews dot BNA dot com. This episode of Parts Pavilion was produced by myself with help from Jessica Coombs and Rachel Daegel.
The music tracks for Parts Revillion are A Message and Scream from a Deaf Man by Jazzaar. They were used under a Creative Commons attribution Share a Life license. More information can be found at Betterwithmusic dot com