"For the past twenty years since Love Canal, many of the companies responsible for the greatest number of Superfund sites have continued to drag their feet, point fingers, and try to roll back the Superfund law in Congress, rather than paying for the strong, permanent cleanups that citizens deserve," said PIRG environmental attorney Daniel Rosenberg. This report shines the spotlight on General Electric, the nation's top Superfund polluter and a leader in the effort to roll back the Superfund law in Congress."

Among the findings in the report, entitled Super Polluters: The Top 25 Superfund Polluters and their Toxic Waste Sites:

• At least one of the Super Polluters is considered a potentially responsible party by EPA at 331 of the 1,194 non-federal Superfund sites, 28% of the total.

• General Electric is a potentially responsible party at Superfund sites in at least 28 states. 42 States have at least one Superfund site where at least one of the Top 25 Superfund polluters is named by EPA as a potentially responsible party.

• The Top 10 Superfund Polluters and the number of their Superfund sites are: General Electric (86), DuPont (81), General Motors (64), Union Carbide (51), Shell Oil (48), Browning Ferris Industries (43), Ford Motor (40), Ashland Chemical (39), Westinghouse Electric (39), Ciba-Geigy (38).

• The 5 states with the most Superfund sites are: New Jersey (117), Pennsylvania (110), California (94), New York (88), Michigan (82).

"BusinessWeek recently called General Electric CEO Jack Welch `America's #1 Manager.' But Mr. Welch should more properly by cited for managing General Electric's high profile campaigns against cleaning up the Hudson River, the nation's largest Superfund site, and the Housatonic River in Pittsfield, Massachusetts where GE "donated" PCB-contaminated fill to residents and schools, while leading the efforts to roll back the Superfund law in Congress,ä said Rosenberg. ãThis month in the House, GE has succeeded in adding language to the report accompanying EPA's budget that would prevent the agency from using dredging as a cleanup remedy at sites contaminated with PCBs. That single provision will achieve GE's main goal: avoid paying to fully clean up the Hudson river, the Housatonic river as well as other contaminated sites,ä Rosenberg added.

"The anti-Superfund lobby is pushing to pass bills and riders in Congress, under the guise of `fixing" the Superfund program, that would roll back the polluter pays principle of Superfund, weaken cleanup standards at the nation's worst hazardous waste sites, and reduce public participation in cleanup decisions. General Electric proposing to fix Superfund is like Al Capone proposing to fix the tax code,ä Rosenberg charged. "Meanwhile, restoration of the expired tax on oil and chemical companies that pays for many Superfund cleanups is being held hostage by these same special interest groups,ä he added.

$4 million dollars a day, $1.6 billion per year, for Superfund cleanups is not being collected, because the Superfund tax expired in December, 1995. The Superfund Trust Fund is projected to run out of money in the year 2000.

Representative Frank Pallone (D-NJ) and 58 of his House colleagues have co-sponsored a bill that would broaden the polluter pays principle, strengthen health standards, protect small parties from abusive lawsuits by big polluters, increase citizen participation in cleanup decisions and expand the public's right to know about toxics in their communities.

"There is still time to pass a positive Superfund reauthorization bill before Congress adjourns for the year," said Rosenberg. We support the Pallone bill and urge members of Congress to support the same responsible approach to Superfund reauthorization. In addition, we urge President Clinton to veto the VA-HUD Appropriations bill, which includes EPA's budget, unless all the anti-environmental riders and report language, including the special GE PCB rider, are removed. The anniversary of Love Canal should be an occasion for strengthening, not weakening, our toxic waste cleanup law," he added.

U.S. PIRG is a non-profit, non-partisan environmental and consumer watchdog group.