As it turns 40 this month, the Superfund program still hasn’t hit its stride. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and environmental advocates, through almost every political administration—both Democratic and Republican—have sought ways to make the federal remediation program run more efficiently, so the nation’s most hazardous waste sites can be cleaned up more quickly, be taken off the National Priorities List and put back to use.
The current EPA administration has spent a significant amount of effort to revamp the Superfund program. “Fixing” Superfund was a priority for former EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, who established a task force in 2017 of 100 career EPA employees to make recommendations for improvements before he resigned the following year. The agency considers acceleration of cleanups and removal of sites from the list during the Trump administration one of its key successes.