Superfund expenditures and cleanup priorities: Distributive politics or the public interest?

John A. Hird

Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, 1990, vol. 9, issue 4, 455-483

Abstract: Using data on all final National Priorities List (NPL) sites, this study employs an integrated model of distributive and public interest politics to determine whether the overall pace of cleanup efforts and funding of the 8.5 billion Superfund program over the past eight years reflects self-interested congressional influence or public interest objectives. Despite the fact that both EPA and Congress have substantial incentives to promote the Superfund program, the results indicate that once a site is on the final NPL, there is little committee-based congressional influence over the distribution of site cleanup or funding, although evidence exists that legislators can hasten a site's transition from proposed to final status on the NPL. The chief determinants of cleanup pace and level of funding are the site's Hazard Ranking System (HRS) scores, whether federal funds are financing the cleanup, and whether the site is designated as a state priority.

Date: 1990
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (17)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.2307/3325258 Link to full text; subscription required (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wly:jpamgt:v:9:y:1990:i:4:p:455-483

DOI: 10.2307/3325258

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Policy Analysis and Management from John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().