Despite successful cleanups, the cost of Superfund projects is likely to remain high for at least a decade, says a congressionally commissioned study by Resources for the Future, a Washington, D.C., economic think-tank.

The report predicts hard times ahead because the pool of funds used to conduct cleanups and run the program will dry up by 2003. The fund had been financed by a tax on chemical and oil companies, which they opposed and Congress canceled in 1995.

Initially, the goal of the 20-year-old law was to require industry to pay for cleanups through the trust fund or settlements brokered by EPA with those responsible for the contamination. Congress canceled the tax based on the belief that Superfund cleanups would slowly ramp down. This report, however, shows otherwise, and now the trust fund is down to $1.3 billion.

And cleanup costs are slowly shifting to the taxpayer. Report author Katherine N. Probst estimates that annual Superfund spending will decline to about $1.3 billion by the decade's end from today's $1.5 billion, about half of which already comes from general revenues.

"It is just not realistic to think the costs of Superfund are going to decline much in the next 10 years," she says. The report found that sites defined as in "protective" condition are not, and some sites classified as "construction complete" need more work.

Most future spending will be directed toward wrapping up work at 1,076 sites now on the Superfund priority list, but large amounts will also be needed as EPA starts addressing expensive problems at new "mega sites," such as contaminated harbor and river sediments, Probst says.

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