In Episode V, We continue our look at the legislative history of Superfund, and how the final bill formed over the course of many years of public debate.
Much of this debate took place before the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works and the House Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce.
As we'll see, a number of legislative proposals were introduced that tried to balance emergency response mechanisms, victim compensation, strict and joint liability, and what percentage of costs were to be covered by the U.S. Federal Government, the States, and the industry.
In the latest installment, we begin our dive into the legislative history and framework of the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act of 1980, or CERCLA.
We conduct a brief survey of some fundamental environmental laws such as the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act and the Solid Waste Disposal Act, which was later amended by the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act.
In looking at these laws and what they accomplished, the framework of environmental law comes into view, providing a good reference for the role of CERCLA and how it supplemented or amended these past statutes.
In Episode III, we continue our survey of a brief history of pollution by looking at the string of environmental legislation passed in the United States in the 1960s and 1970s in the lead-up to a number of highly publicized environmental crises that were beginning to grip the nation, including Love Canal.
As the general public and lawmakers came to the realization that our landscape was peppered with thousands of abandoned toxic waste sites, they passed the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act of 1980—CERCLA—establishing the Superfund program.
Public awareness of the issue led to mobilization of communities in the form of protests, volunteerism, and engagement, which propelled movements of citizen science, environmental justice, and environmental literacy.
In Episode II, we continue our survey of a brief history of pollution, further illustrating the transformation of the U.S. industrial economy at the turn of the 20th century, and how that led into post-World War II economic growth in the years from 1945 to 1975—otherwise known as, The Glorious Thirty.
Arriving in the 1970s, society takes an unprecedented stance against industrial pollution in the wake of years of environmental crises and catastrophes. One of the more famous, known simply as Love Canal, marks a turning point in how the U.S. focused environmental legislation.
This new framework of federal environmental laws, headed by the EPA, set the stage for the last few decades of the 20th century, and where we are in the pollution debate today.
In this inaugural episode of Superfund: Case Studies of Pollution, host Michael Pintauro introduces the podcast, its mission and purpose and embarks on a semi-comprehensive survey of society's complex relationship with industrial pollution.
Join us as we take a look at the last 2000 years of pollution and how concepts of nuisance, common law, and reasonable use have evolved over time to inform our current legal system of environmental legislation.