In response to hazardous waste disasters such as Love Canal, New York, in the 1970s, Congress passed the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA), better known as Superfund, in 1980. The law created a fund of $1.6 billion to be used to clean up hazardous waste sites and hazardous waste spills for a period of five years. The primary source of support for the fund came from a tax on chemical feedstock producers; general revenues supplied the rest of the money needed. CERCLA is different from most environmental laws because it deals with past problems rather than trying to prevent future pollution, and because the Environmental Protec- tion Agency (EPA), in addition to acting as a regulatory agency, must clean up sites itself.

Throughout the decade before the creation of Superfund, the public began...