A person who may have contributed a very small amount of waste to a site may be held accountable for the entire cost of the clean-up because of his ability to pay. This means even more litigation. Retroactive liability should be abolished. Holding parties liable to spend tens of millions of dollars on site clean up for actions that were legal or standard business practice years ago is not only unfair, but stretches the constitution to the point of breaking. In addition, Superfund's retroactive liability scheme sets the stage for the costly and continuous litigation that is the chief cause of its failure.
Retroactive liability diverts money from cleaning waste sites to legal teams filing lawsuits.