Few environmental problems have stirred the kind of popular
passions that are behind the concern over abandoned hazardous
waste landfills. Similarly, few environmental laws have aroused
the disdain and frustration that policy analysts of all stripe
feel toward Superfund, the main legislative vehicle that
addresses those public fears. Although by no means the most
expensive or most encompassing of environmental statutes,
Superfund nonetheless costs society about $4 billion annually
and, according to a study by the Waste Management Research and
Education Institute at the University of Tennessee, will
eventually cost the nation about $400 billion. The law has done
terrible economic damage to those unfortunate parties targeted
by its crude attempt to “make the polluter pay.” In fact, the
statute’s economic and environmental excesses are so widely
acknowledged and well documented that it is curious that reform,
rather than repeal, is the political currency of the day. The
truth is that Superfund’s problems are so