What about the waste already polluting areas?

I’ve mentioned how terrible landfills and air toxin emissions can be, but these have been too vague of references. I want to learn about how waste sites are managed, especially the extreme cases (probably not caused exclusively by disposed plastic bottles.) I’ve researched what’s done with waste sites, by whom, and if this process is effective. The EPA website is most helpful.
(http://www.epa.gov/superfund/index.htm)

Keyword today: SUPERFUND

From EPA: “Superfund is the federal government's program to clean up the nation's uncontrolled hazardous waste sites. We're committed to ensuring that remaining National Priorities List hazardous waste sites are cleaned up to protect the environment and the health of all Americans.”

From BU Professor Rossell:

• In 1980, the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act, also dubbed the “hazardous waste superfund,” was created to provide the EPA with the authority and funds to regulate emissions.
• In 29 years, this superfund has collected over $1.6 billion to clean up waste sites.

From EPA: “This law was enacted in the wake of the discovery of toxic waste dumps such as Love Canal and Times Beach in the 1970s. It allows the EPA to clean up such sites and to compel responsible parties to perform cleanups or reimburse the government for EPA-lead cleanups.”

From me:

Thumbs up:

• This sounds like a great system. The EPA assesses sites, then places them on a “National Priorities List.” Working down this list, the EPA implements cleanup initiatives, worked by federal, state, tribal, and local staff the EPA has trained.
• This project removes wastes, enforces against those parties who were “potentially responsible***” works to involve local communities and states, and ensures long-term environmental care.

Thumbs down:

• I can see how conservatives would not like this Act. It allows the EPA to target locations that need to be cleaned up, by the EPA’s standards, not the area’s standards. The EPA then charges the area’s entities to clean it up. For communities content with waste and low on funding, the EPA could be a misfortune. For example, I could see this dismaying factory managers:
  
  *** From EPA: “The Superfund Enforcement program gets Superfund sites cleaned up by finding the companies or people responsible for contamination at a site, and negotiating with them to do the clean up themselves, or to pay for the clean up done by another party (i.e., EPA, state, or other responsible parties).”

Yet all in all, if the EPA didn’t step into these areas… most of them probably wouldn’t be cleaned up, and the EPA, a necessary agency in the United States, wouldn’t be funded as well. This Act establishes local community awareness for environmentalism too, something we need to see much more in the U.S. Businesses, which this program would hold responsible for pollution, now have the incentive to cut down on emissions before pollution gets bad – pollution prevention is much more cost effective than pollution cleanup.

So if you don’t want to pay for the EPA to come clean up your area, do it yourself. Stop polluting. 5 points for the Superfund.