An estimated 400,000 brownfields" litter the United States. These are industrial and commercial facilities that are abandoned, idled or underused because potential developers fear the sites may contain at least low levels of environmental contamination. The developers could be liable for the cost of cleaning up contamination under Superfund, the federal program created in 1980 to clean up toxic waste sites.

• Despite spending more than $20 billion - including $12 billion from taxpayers and $7 billion in levies on companies - Superfund has cleaned up only 83 of more than 1,300 sites that are on the National Priority List for cleanup.

• The average Superfund cleanup takes 12 years and costs $32 million - without factoring in litigation costs that consume 36 cents of every dollar spent on cleanup.

Under Superfund and other laws, both past and present owners and operators of a site, and individuals who generated waste or transported it to the site, are held to strict, joint and several and retroactive liability. This means anyone involved can be required to pay the full cleanup costs, even if they played only a small and unintentional role in creating the problem.

Until the Superfund liability scheme is changed, redeveloping brownfields will continue to be perceived as an enterprise potentially fraught with peril.

Source: Michael Harrold, "Brownfields: Superfund's Economic Toxic Shock," Issue Analysis No. 18, December 8, 1995, Citizens for a Sound Economy Foundation, 1250 H Street, NW, Suite 700, Washington, DC 20005, (202) 783-3870.