EDISON, N.J. -- For 11 years, Robert Spiegel spent his nights creating elaborate wedding cakes and his days trying to force the government to clean up the arsenic, lead, dioxin and other lethal chemicals that saturate a six-acre lot nestled between suburban homes and a factory-sized bakery.

His commitment seemed about to pay off when, after years of studies and planning, federal Environmental Protection Agency officials announced a $28.5-million cleanup of the site where Chemical Insecticide Corp. had once manufactured a range of deadly chemicals, including the components of Agent Orange. Work was to begin this fall.

But a few months ago, local EPA officials told Spiegel not to expect the cleanup to begin soon. Then, last month, a report by the EPA inspector general named the Chemical Insecticide site as one of 33 priority Superfund sites in 19 states that had not received funding requested by EPA branch offices.

"It's like getting the wind knocked out of you," said an outraged Spiegel, as he stood amid about 60 barrels of hazardous materials left at the site.

With a number of sites around the country denied financing and the Superfund close to running out of money, there is growing concern at the grass-roots level that years of hard work to clean toxic waste sites may end in futility.

Congress and President Carter created the Superfund program in 1980 in response to the public outcry over the toxic disaster at Love Canal in New York. The trust fund, which was financed through taxes on polluting industries and court awards for hazardous substance releases, provided money for cleanups on sites where the polluters could not be charged. By the program's 20th anniversary, 757 sites had been cleaned nationwide.

But the fund is expected to be all but depleted by the end of next year, leaving it to scarce general tax revenue to pay for any further cleanups.

Spiegel and other supporters of the program attribute the idleness at Chemical Insecticide and other toxic sites to the Bush administration's failure to renew the tax, which expired in 1995. President Clinton proposed renewing it, but the GOP-controlled Congress balked.

"The perception that things are slowing down is arising from the fact that so much hysteria has been created ... in the community," said EPA spokesman Joe Martyak.

Marianne L. Horinko, the assistant EPA administrator in charge of the Superfund program, called Spiegel's concerns "unfounded." "I'm not slowing anything down," she said.

Since the inspector general's report, about half of the 33 Superfund sites have either been allocated some federal cleanup funds or determined to be not ready for cleanup. But at least 16 sites are still listed as ready, but without the funding.

These stalled cleanups and the failure to reinstate the tax have contributed to growing grass-roots skepticism about the federal government's commitment to the program, according to local environmentalists and members of Congress with sites in their districts.

"With the trust fund declining, there is a lot more uncertainty about future funding," said Karen N. Probst, the author of a congressionally ordered report released last year on the Superfund's future. "And with the Bush administration's environmental track record, when the Bush administration says they're committed to Superfund, people aren't that sure."

If the government fails to clean up the Superfund sites quickly--after communities have slogged through the extensive application, testing and planning stages--the program's reputation could be undermined, said Probst, a senior fellow at Resources for the Future, a Washington-based think tank that focuses on the economics of environmental problems.

"It took them 12 years to get to where they are," Probst said, referring to the activists in Edison, N.J. "The whole program's credibility will be hurt if there are projects in the pipeline for that long and then EPA has to stop cleanups."

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First Visit in 1990

On a recent afternoon, the back gate was wide open at the long-abandoned Chemical Insecticide Corp. The only indication of the potential danger inside was a sign face down in the dirt that read: "Danger no trespassing; hazardous substances present."

In the 1950s and 1960s a variety of pesticides and herbicides, including DDT and the components of Agent Orange, were produced here and shipped as far as Vietnam. Excess chemicals were dumped into several large pits. Through the years, the chemicals migrated across the parking lot of a large bakery and into a brook that flows through an apartment complex.

In 1969, when the plant was still functioning, six cows died after drinking water in that brook. The plant owner was fined $200, according to a newspaper article.

The plant buildings were razed long ago. Nature appears to have reclaimed the site with shrubs, trees and weeds.

Spiegel first visited the site in 1990 with a friend who was familiar with it. At the time, the property was not fenced despite the potential danger to people who lived in the neighborhood and the children who attended a nearby school.

Rabbits with lime-green undercoats, apparently from exposure to the pesticide Dinoseb in the soil and water on the lot, hopped around the lot, Spiegel said. The EPA banned Dinoseb in 1986 because of the high risk of birth defects and other health problems.

Spiegel was appalled. What he saw that day inspired him and some friends to create the Edison Wetlands Assn., an environmental group.

"Somebody had to do something about it," he said. "That somebody was me. I had no idea it would become my life's crusade."

He gathered every document he could about the plant's history. One day when he was copying documents at the regional EPA office, the clerk assigned to help him felt ill and left him alone. He copied almost the entire contents of two file drawers. The next time he visited the office, most of those documents had been removed from public files.

"They made some of the most dangerous stuff known to mankind here," Spiegel said.

After much haranguing from Spiegel and his group, the EPA tested a nearby stream and found arsenic and other dangerous chemicals. As an interim effort in the mid-1990s to stop the spread of the toxic chemicals, the EPA dug up the stream bed and installed an impermeable cap, like a huge swimming pool cover, over the part of the site where hazardous chemicals were most concentrated.

This has prevented the migration of most harmful chemicals. But these were supposed to be only temporary fixes until specialists could conduct tests to assess the extent of the contamination and plot the appropriate solution.

Spiegel and the residents were delighted two years ago when the EPA proposed removing 106,000 cubic yards, enough to cover a football field with five stories of dirt, from the site. Detailed diagrams of the excavation were completed and the community approved plans to move the dirt on trucks.

Now the EPA has put that plan back on the shelf.

Edison Mayor George Spadorois is considering filing suit against the EPA for breaking its contract with the community.

"What's happened here is outrageous," he said. "They've done a terrible injustice to Edison."

Meanwhile, the cap has already passed its projected life span and is starting to break up in some places.

"The longer it takes to clean it up, the more possibility that health impacts could get worse," said Rep. Frank Pallone Jr. (D-N.J.), who represents Edison in Congress.

Pallone said residents are right to be concerned about whether the government will make good on its promise to clean up hazardous sites at a time when the trust fund, which held $3.8 billion as recently as 1996, is down to its last $28 million.

"People have no confidence; they know there is going to be no money in the trust fund next year," Pallone said. "The notion that we're going to rely on general revenue funds I think is nonsense. There's too much competition for that money."

Horinko called the concerns about the tax a "red herring."

"As long as they send me the dollars that I can use to get cleanup done, that's what matters to me," she said.

Funding has remained flat for the program in recent years at about $1.2 billion a year, with money from general tax revenue supplementing the fund.

Horinko and other EPA officials explained the stalled cleanups at Edison and the 15 other sites as routine consequences of budgeting priorities. They stressed that the government remains committed to the cleanups.

But neither Horinko nor EPA officials in the region could specify when they would take place.

One clue might come from Probst's report to Congress, which projected that Superfund cleanups would require an extra $200 million to $400 million per year in 2002 through 2004 on top of its $1.2-billion base level.

Spiegel, for one, is not letting the setback deter him.

This is the first year that Spiegel's group had the money to pay him a salary, and he has quit his baking job to press for cleanups of New Jersey's many toxic waste dumps full time. He is lobbying Congress to renew the Superfund tax, and he is trying to form alliances with like-minded groups around the country.

He recently sent each member of the Senate Environment Committee a stuffed green rabbit. A note with each bunny declared: "It's not easy being green. Vote yes on the Superfund Tax."

Copyright 2002 Los Angeles Times

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