The purpose of the program is to assess and cleanup sites of federal interest to uses desired by the surrounding community in a manner protective of human health and the environment. EPA is authorized to use a trust fund to pay for this work and to pursue recovery of EPA expenditures from parties potentially responsible for the contamination. By law, the Superfund program cannot currently be delegated to the states. Rhode Island, under state law, administers its own assessments and cleanup program at contaminated sites of state interest. As part of the EPA-New England initiative, the region is working jointly with states to develop their voluntary cleanup programs.
Additional sites continue to be added as warranted.
Approximately ten sites per year are investigated and evaluated under this program. Although the initial listing of sites on the federal inventory is based on a suspicion of disposal activities, property owners and representatives from industries have repeatedly expressed concern that this listing creates a stigma on the title to the property that makes financing and further development virtually impossible. The Office has adopted the internal position that these property owners and industry representatives will be given the opportunity to take good faith actions under the State program to avoid inclusion on the federal inventory. Sites where the private parties are unwilling or unable to conduct the necessary investigations and clean-ups will be referred to this program. This section is responsible for fulfilling the Department's obligations relating to Superfund National Priority List sites, which are the sites posing the greatest threats to human health and the environment as ranked through a national process.