Superfund, a governmental project to help clean up hazardous waste sites, is now almost bankrupt after spending more than one billion dollars a year. As a result of this, the number of sites that Superfund restores has been and still is decreasing. Since 1980 the program has cleaned up 886 sites but still has 1,203 to go. Traditionally, Superfund made industries responsible for the waste pay to clean it up. However, some business went bankrupt, and other sites were abandoned to escape repercussions. These other sites were usually funded by extra taxes on oil and chemical companies, but now taxpayers fund 53% of the clean up costs.
Some advocate to reinstate legislation that ended in 1995 to make companies responsible for funding the clean up of their own doing, but others point out that all Superfund accomplished was a lot of finger-pointing. The organization would make a few companies finance the restoration, and those companies would sue other companies that might have been involved. As a result, much money is spent on lawyers and not enough of the actual cleaning. All in all, Superfund is in the toilet unless taxes are raised for a specific group or companies who produce and manufacture in a non-environmentally safe way are forced to pay for their damage.
Helpful link: http://www.epa.gov/superfund/