Ten Years of Progress In the Superfund Program

Abstract

Superfund celebrated its tenth anniversary in December 1990. The Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA)—popularly known as Superfund—was passed into law in December 1980 in the wake of such incidents as Love Canal and the Valley of the Drums. The program was designed to clean up uncontrolled hazardous waste sites and, during the past ten years, thousands of actions have been taken to protect human health and the environment from the hazards posed by those sites. The trials and successes of the evolving Superfund program are described in this article.