[Editors] MIT: Superfund cleanups may not be worth cost

[Jen Hirsch]

For Immediate Release
MONDAY, AUG. 4, 2008

Contact: Jen Hirsch, MIT News Office
T. 617-253-1682   E.: jfhirsch at mit.edu

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MIT: Superfund may not be so super
--Cleanups don’t seem to be worth the cost
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The cost of the federal Superfund program isn’t bringing financial  
returns to homeowners living near the cleaned-up toxic sites,  
according to new research by Michael Greenstone, the 3M Professor of  
Environmental Economics at MIT.

In a paper to be published in the August issue of the Quarterly  
Journal of Economics, Greenstone and a colleague analyzed housing  
markets affected by Superfund, a federal government program that  
cleans up the largest and most dangerous hazardous waste sites in the  
U.S. Greenstone compared the housing prices of homes surrounding  
Superfund sites to those surrounding sites that narrowly missed  
qualifying for Superfund remediation.

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Since Superfund’s inception in 1980, almost 1,600 sites have been  
identified and made eligible for federally funded cleanups. Cleanup  
activities have been concluded at approximately two-thirds of these  
sites at an average cost of more than $43 million. The expected cost  
to clean up the remaining sites is an additional $30 billion.

Greenstone found that the expensive cleanups failed to increase house  
prices or rental rates near Superfund sites in comparison with  
neighborhoods surrounding toxic sites where Superfund cleanups did  
not take place. In addition, the population of the neighborhoods and  
rate of new home construction remained at pre-cleanup levels.

The paper also notes that the average cleanup takes 12-13 years to  
complete. “The lengthy interventions are disruptive and very  
expensive,” Greenstone said. “The housing market’s clear message is  
that the cleanups are not worth it to the people living near these  
sites.”

Greenstone is now investigating whether there are health benefits  
from these cleanups, as his preliminary results failed to find  
reductions in the rates of infant mortality and birth defects or  
increases in birth weight.

“We are facing a wide range of environmental problems, including the  
severe threats to our well-being posed by climate change and water  
and air pollution,” Greenstone said. “In this time of limited  
budgets, society should focus its resources on solving problems that  
improve people’s lives.”

This work was funded in part by the Center for Energy and  
Environmental Policy Research at MIT. Greenstone’s co-author, Justin  
Gallagher, is a graduate student at UC Berkeley.