Revenue streams are unpredictability and delicate. Citizen suits have this potential, since nonprofits may recover expenses and legal fees. The costs of documenting enforcement cases and collecting fines are very high, and must be weighed against the likelihood and importance of gaining compliance without fines. Under these contingent liability provisions, all past and present users of sites designated as federal Superfund sites, and many State-designated sites, are liable for damage cost recovery, including abandoned sites. Users, called responsible parties, include waste generators, transporters who select the disposal site, and disposal facility owners and operators.
Responsible parties are liable for both clean-up costs and related damage to natural resources.
The potential for cost-recovery is, theoretically, huge. However, the legal difficulties in collecting reimbursements mean that negotiations have been protracted and expensive, particularly for abandoned sites and non-industrial parties. Interest on Superfund settlement accounts also can be large, and amendments to existing law might create the ability to use such funds for State purposes off-site, such as credit enhancement for SRF activities, liability insurance funds for small facilities, and brownfields redevelopment. The Superfund natural resources damage laws might be more widely used if ecological damage could be more readily valuated. Many financial leveraging possibilities exist.