After the release of the President’s budget a former EPA Superfund employee spoke to Inside EPA to express her fears of a return to “funding challenges like in the old days” and “a new backlog of unfunded construction projects,” because estimated tax receipts are less than previously projected. Inside EPA flogged this storyline in three articles, first in a March 19 story headlined: “Superfund Tax Receipts Fall Short, Raising Fears Of New Cleanup Backlog,” second in a March 26 story headlined: “EPA Faces Costlier Superfund Cleanups Amid Declining Tax Revenues”, and third in an April 2 “Insider” story headlined “EPA’s Cleanup Costs Appear to Grow As Superfund Tax Receipts Fall Short.” E&E News followed on April 15 with a somewhat more balanced story, despite the alarmist headline of “Superfund tax shortfall: Trouble for cleanups, EPA budget.” In the E&E News story both an Environment America executive director and I am cited for the observation that the Superfund program has more money than it ever has had before.
A 2015 Government Accountability Report shows that between 1999 and 2013, Superfund appropriations declined from about $2 billion to $1.1 billion in constant 2013 dollars. As shown in Figure 3 of a CRS Report on EPA Appropriations, Superfund appropriations remained relatively flat for the next eight years, which is actually a decline given the impact of inflation.
That changed with the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, which reinstated taxes on the sales of certain chemicals and certain petroleum products respectively, and permanently appropriated all tax receipts to carry out the Superfund program.
While the Treasury has somewhat lowered its estimated Superfund tax receipts the new estimates in no way suggest that the Superfund program is running out of money. In fact, the opposite is true. The Appendix showing the President’s budget request for EPA reveals that the Superfund program is not spending all the resources it has and apparently is not planning to do so anytime in the near future.
According to the Budget Appendix, the unobligated balance of the Trust Fund is expected to be $5.515 billion at the end of FY 2024 and $6.040 billion at the end of FY 2025. These are the Superfund resources available to EPA to spend on new cleanups. When you add in special accounts and state matching funds that are earmarked to specific sites OMB estimates that the total balance of the Superfund Trust Fund will be $11.633 billion at the end of FY 2024.
It is interesting to compare the current unobligated balance to caps previously imposed by Congress. Until it was repealed in the Inflation Reduction Act, section 4611(e) of the Internal Revenue Code suspended the Superfund taxes if the unobligated balance exceeded $3.5 billion. Obviously, the balance now greatly exceeds that cap.
EPA does not need to worry that it will lack resources to carry out the Superfund program. In fact, EPA should instead worry that if it does not spend the money it has on cleanups, Congress will reinstate the cap on unobligated balances.
