The EPA Stashes BILLIONS In Slush Fund-Like Accounts
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) officials have accumulated at least $6.3 billion in more than 1,300 obscure spending accounts akin to slush funds that are essentially beyond congressional, media and public scrutiny.
The accounts – which were created through EPA’s Superfund program – are not technically secret because the agency officially acknowledges their existence. But getting concrete details about deposits and expenditures is extremely difficult.
The EPA
deposited more than $6.3 billion into an estimated 1,308 special accounts between 1990 and 2015, according to the agency’s website, and has spent more than half of the total. The agency doesn’t publicly report individual special account balances or expenses.
TheDCNF investigation also found that funds deposited in special accounts skyrocketed after Congress allowed a tax that primarily financed Superfund activities to expire in 1995. The EPA also began heavily stripping appropriated funds previously promised to Superfund sites and began settling more cases with polluters around the same time.
“Increases in de-obligations reflect maturity of the superfund program,” the EPA spokeswoman told TheDCNF. “Factors such as completion of construction projects and enforcement settlements have allowed the agency to appropriately de-obligate funds so they can be used on other projects.”
“The polluter-pays policy is a long-standing policy for EPA and has no relationship with the lapse of Superfund taxing authority,” she said.
An estimated
80 percent of EPA’s enforcement actions ended in settlements through 2007, according to a 2009 Government Accountability Office report, and lawsuits decreased by nearly 50 percent.
“Some attorneys said their clients tend to settle with EPA because responsible parties are unlikely to succeed in avoiding liability in litigation against the federal government,” the report said.
Overall, the Superfund’s performance record is debatable. The EPA claims cleanup construction has been
completed at nearly 1,200 sites and that 752 sites are ready for new uses.
But less than one-quarter of all superfund sites have been completely cleaned over the program’s 35-year history, and dangerous substances that endanger humans could remain at as many as 319 sites, TheDCNF previously reported.
(RELATED: Fed Superfund Gets Billions To Clean Up Pollution — Doesn’t Actually Do Much At All)