When incidents such as the exxon valdez occur, who pays?
The costly costly cleanup of environmental contamination is supposed to be paid by those who are responsible for the contamination. Expenses for a typical oil spill or hazardous waste release average over $20 million; the Exxon Valdez was many times that.
It is the job of the EPA to locate all those who had anything to do with the contamination and negotiate to get them to pay for the clean-up work. If many are involved, they bear a proportionate share of the costs. If negotiations fail or if the party disputes responsibility, basically the EPA can do one of two things: (1) it can require potentially responsible parties to clean up the contamination or, (2) it, itself, can conduct the cleanup and then sue those responsible to recover its costs (up to three times the amount).
When that those responsible cannot be found, will not pay, or cannot pay, the costs of federal cleanup activities are covered under the Superfund and the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund (both financed through taxes).
The state also can sue those responsible in cleaning up a polluted hazardous waste site under its own version of CERCLA or RCRA by filing an action in court separate from that filed by the EPA.
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