As one of the most notoriously expensive and complicated agency-led programs in the country, the Superfund has stirred a contentious funding debate since its inception in 1980. While the excise taxes established by the Superfund Amendments and Reauthorization Act (SARA) in 1986 raised substantial revenues for the Hazardous Substance Response Trust Fund, allowing the EPA to fund removal, remediation, and enforcement actions at Superfund sites, they expired in 1995 resulting in a significant decline in the program’s financial resources. Although researchers, EPA officials, and policymakers have recognized that this funding issue must be resolved, no consensus has been reached on the efficacy of the SARA taxes, causing attempts of reinstatement to fail again and again. Existing scholarship offers little to no insight into the connection between these taxes and the Superfund’s on-the-ground remediation results further impeding policymakers from making informed decisions regarding the program’s revenue collecting mechanisms.

My thesis seeks to fill this gap in research by evaluating how the SARA taxes impacted remediation outcomes of NPL final and deleted sites in EPA Region 5. To assess the influence the taxes had on this region’s remediation decisions, I analyze how site-specific attributes change at deleted NPL sites across the tax expiration threshold. I also employ a comparative spatial study of host communities’ demographics surrounding deleted NPL sites during and after the taxes. This mixed-methods approach enables me to identify if certain features of a site influenced its likelihood for cleanup during the presence or absence of the SARA taxes.

My findings indicate that Region 5 remediation decisions post-SARA were potentially driven by cost considerations resulting in the favoring of less complicated and costly sites as well as sites with present and able potentially responsible parties (PRPs). While these findings are Region 5 specific, they reveal a possible concerning trend in the Superfund’s implementation of the remediation program. That being said, I call for more conclusive and nationwide research to be conducted for the link between the SARA taxes and remediation outcomes to be fully understood. This information can help guide policymakers to establish Superfund measures that enable it to meet its growing funding needs.