The Superfund Process

During my surfing the other day I came across a list of Federal Superfund sites and remedial actions plans for these sites.  Specifically I ended up at the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.  I moved on to the list of Harris County Superfund Sites, which lists 25 sites. 

A graphic of the Superfund Process grabbed my attention.  The graphic comes from the San Jacinto River Waste Pits:

 

What is the Superfund and National Priorities List (NPL)???  The EPA has summarized this for you:

The Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act of 1980 ("CERCLA" or "the Act"), as amended, requires that the National Oil and Hazardous Substances Pollution Contingency Plan ("NCP") include a list of national priorities among the known releases or threatened releases of hazardous substances, pollutants, or contaminants throughout the United States. The National Priorities List ("NPL") constitutes this list. The NPL is intended primarily to guide the Environmental Protection Agency ("EPA" or "the Agency") in determining which sites warrant further investigation. These further investigations will allow EPA to assess the nature and extent of public health and environmental risks associated with the site and to determine what CERCLA-financed remedial action(s), if any, may be appropriate. This rule adds 12 sites to the General Superfund Section of the NPL.

Wikipedia has a better summary of Superfund:

Superfund is the common name for the United States environmental policy officially known as the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA, 42 U.S.C. § 9601–9675), enacted by the United States Congress on December 11, 1980 in response to the Love Canal disaster.^[1] The Superfund law was created to protect people, families, communities and others from heavily contaminated toxic waste sites that have been abandoned.^[2]

^{And NPL:}

The National Priorities List ("NPL") is the list of hazardous waste sites in the United States eligible for long-term remedial action financed under the federal Superfund program. Environmental Protection Agency ("EPA") regulations outline a formal process for assessing hazardous waste sites and placing them on the NPL. The NPL is intended primarily to guide the EPA in determining which sites warrant further investigation.

Sites are listed on the NPL upon completion of Hazard Ranking System (HRS) screening, public solicitation of comments about the proposed site, and after all comments have been addressed. EPA may delete a final NPL site if it determines that no further response is required to protect human health or the environment. Sites where a remediation was completed through the Superfund program are typically deleted from the NPL.

As of January 2006, there were 62 Proposed, 1238 Final, and 309 Deleted sites on the NPL in the United States (including Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands).