The Superfund hazardous waste cleanup program is not among the great environmental policy success stories. Nearly every assessment of it points to slow progress in cleaning up the nation's thousands of abandoned hazardous waste sites, exceptionally high costs of remediation, and exorbitant transaction costs attributable to the policy's liability provisions and a pervasive tendency to litigate. John Hird admirably covers these and other issues and anchors his argument with original and often rigorous analysis found in few other treatments of Superfund policy. The reader is rewarded with a thorough, extensively documented, and well-written description of the origins, operation, and effects of the Superfund program and an astute appraisal of its many flaws. The book is a valuable contribution to the literature on Superfund policy and politics. It joins other excellent treatments of Superfund and related policies on toxic chemicals and hazardous wastes such as Daniel Mazmanian and David Morell's Beyond Superfailure: America's Toxics Policy for the 1990s (Westview, 1992) and Thomas Church and Robert Nakamura's Cleaning up the Mess: Implementation Strategies in Superfund (Brookings, 1993).

Hird's focus is substantially different from other books on toxics policy. He grounds his critique of Superfund in the literature of comparative risk assessment and political economy. In several early chapters, he offers an overview of approaches and methods for assessing and managing environmental and health risks, both in general and in regard to Superfund. Indeed, this extended treatment of risk issues almost constitutes a separate monograph within the book. It is perhaps too elaborate given the purpose of assessing Superfund.

Hird goes on to argue, with considerable validity, that most (though not all) Superfund sites pose a much smaller risk to public health and the environment than the American public and Congress appear to believe. Hence he asserts that the program represents a highly inefficient allocation of scarce societal resources. It provides few benefits in improved public or ecological health in comparison to the sizeable expenditures being made.

The general critique of misplaced environmental policy priorities is widely heard in the 1990s. The EPA itself has actively promoted it, most prominently in its 1990 report Reducing Risk. Hird strives for a balanced presentation, though he leans toward the "rational" or technical view of environmental risk over the "populist" perspective that accords greater legitimacy to citizen views of risk.

One might quibble with some aspects of this argument. At times, Hird dismisses a little too easily the public's expression of concern over risks of toxic chemicals and hazardous wastes. He also gives too little consideration to the arguments of the environmental justice movement, which he finds largely misplaced based on his own analysis of the distribution of Superfund sites. Yet as Hird acknowledges, there is substantial scientific uncertainty over health and environmental risks posed by many hazardous waste sites, including those at federal facilities involving radioactive wastes.

The political response to "popular epidemiology" and public outrage, which Hird notes has contributed to making Superfund policy so inefficient and inequitable, is understandable. Certainly, it is imperative that the nation do a better job of identifying public health and environmental risks and setting reasonable priorities. Yet the concerns of citizens in hundreds of affected communities across the nation also must be addressed. Unfortunately, diminished public trust and confidence in government as well as corporate officials greatly complicates the development of solutions to the challenge.

The answer would seem to lie in design of new ways of involving the public in cleanup decisions which promote a fruitful dialogue on acceptable risk issues. Hird suggests the possibilities for this kind of reform in his last chapter. He endorses the creation of "institutions that allow the public to become more actively involved in seeking cooperative risk management solutions" that "consider "legitimate citizen concerns" as well as technical measures of environmental and public health risks. Current Superfund legislation before Congress incorporates some of these ideas. Students of environmental policy will be keenly interested in seeing the results.

Michael E. Kraft
University of Wisconsin- Green Bay