Beyond Superfailure: America's Toxics Policy for the 1990s.

In 1980, Congress passed the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act, which create the "Superfund" program, in order to provide a mechanism that could be used to authorize and pay for the clean up of existing hazardous waste sites. The title of this book, Beyond Superfailure, is obviously meant to convey the conclusion that this program, along with the 1986 Superfund Amendments and Reauthorization Act (SARA) and efforts to regulate the disposal of hazardous wastes through the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act of 1976 (RCRA), have not accomplished their goals. But the title is also meant to convey the sense that there are some ways that we can learn from past efforts and more beyond the shortcomings of past policy.

The book begins with a brief introduction to the problem of toxic waste and its improper disposal, describing the political and social context which created pressure for Congress to take action. It also provides a brief overview of the public policy responses to toxic waste problems. Chapter 2 turns its attention to the details of the Superfund law, and presents a succinct description of the problems that have arisen in its implementation. Chapter 3 puts even more detail on the assessment of Superfund with a reprint of the "How Clean is Clean? A Case of the Nation's No. 1 Superfund Toxic Dump," written by Carl Van Horn and Yvonne Chilik. This case study if the Lipari landfill site near Alcyon Lake in Pitman, NJ, serves as a well-places illustration of the difficulties encountered in implementing Superfund cleanups.

Chapter t turns its attention to RCRA and the Hazardous and Solid Waste Amendments of 1984, the legislative efforts to prevent more superfund sites from occurring in the future. This chapter provides a clear example of "policy learning" where the 1984 Act was well informed by the federal and state experiences in implementing the 1976 Act. Yet the conclusion is that efforts to reduce the sources of hazardous waste by industry and households have only just begun to be pursued. Chapter 5 seeks to explain why American industry has not done more to develop and introduce improved techniques for reducing the stream of hazardous waste, and attributes this failure to "...a complex set of constraints on technology, including competitive costs, regulatory processes, marketplace uncertainties, financial risks, concern over liability, and...local opposition to needed new facilities.

Chapter 6 tackles the question of the need for safer hazardous materials management with special emphasis on what various states have done to prepare for and prevent accidents involving hazardous wastes. Chapter 7 succinctly describes the problem with siting new hazardous waste treatment facilities, and how public policy might work to replace the NIMBY (not-in-my- backyard) syndrome with the YIMBY (yes in my backyard) response. Ultimately the chapter lays the blame for siting difficulties squarely at feet of the "failure of discourse." Chapter 8 provides a summary of a broad strategy needed to address issues of toxics in the future. The authors discuss the promise and limitations of efforts to change industry behavior, a shift to positive-action (incentive-based) permitting, compliance and cleanup by government agencies, community contracting for siting individual waste treatment facilities, applying the public utility model to siting, permitting, and managing waste treatment facilities, relying on regional compacts and management strategies, managing hazardous wastes through statewide or regional auctions, and the improvement of democratic discourse.

Mazmanian and Morell have written a book that probably provides the single best treatment of America's policies towards hazardous waste management available today. It is a work that places heavy emphasis on the actual implementation of hazardous waste legislation, a subject which is not covered very well except in case study formats. This book makes a valiant effort to see the bigger picture, emphasizing the patterns of problems experienced in hazardous waste cleanup, efforts to manage newly created wastes (including siting new waste treatment facilities), and ways in which private industry has responded or not responded to new market and regulatory challenges. Perhaps most important, the book attempts to assemble the many proposals that have been put forth as ways of improving America's toxic waste management and to realistically assess them in the context of the political, social, market environments in which they would have to operate. Thus, the authors provide a clearly articulated statement of the ways in which various proposals could be used, or might be useless, in improving toxic waste management.

Michael W. Bowers
University of Nevada, Las Vegas