RFF Superfund National Priorities List Database

The RFF Superfund National Priorities List Database includes information on 1,134 nonfederal sites on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's National Priorities List (NPL). The database was created by researchers at Resources for the Future to estimate the financial impact of alternative Superfund liability schemes on the size of the Hazardous Response Trust Fund and on major industry sectors likely to bear the cost of cleanup under the current liability scheme. RFF's estimates of the costs of five different liability alternatives are presented in the book Footing the Bill for Superfund Cleanups: Who Pay and How?, published jointly in early 1995 by Resources for the Future and the Brookings Institution. Using the RFF database, it is possible to estimate the effects of different liability schemes on needed trust fund revenues as well as the total responsible party transaction costs and the magnitude of cleanup costs borne by key industry sectors. For each site in the database, information is included regarding: the name of the site and EPA identification number; --the type of facility on the site (such as chemical manufacturing facility, wood preserving facility, co-disposal landfill); --the industry sector most likely to bear the initial cost of cleanup; --the number of potentially responsible parties (PRPs) at the site; whether the site is an "orphan" site, that is, there are no financially viable PRP's; --the data waste was last disposed (before 1980 or 1987); and, finally, --estimated total site cleanup costs, based on average cleanup costs for sixteen different types of NPL sites. This site-specific information is not maintained in any single database at the Environmental Protection Agency. The RFF database includes information from an EPA database produced as a result of interviews the agency conducted in August 1993 of remedial project managers at each site. This "RPM Survey" database is a primary source of some of the information assembled for RFF researchers. The other information in the RFF National Priorities List Database was developed by reviewing and synthesizing data from a number of EPA sources. RFF's estimates of the cost of cleanup for each site built on work performed by the University of Tennessee's Waste Management and Education Institute. The RFF National Priorities List Database is available on PC-DOS disks, both on a 3.5" high density disk (1.44 M) and 5.25" disk (1.2M). This database is also available on the Worldwide Web (http;//www.rff.org).Resources for the Future Staff is the author of 'RFF Superfund National Priorities List Database', published 1995 under ISBN 9780915707782 and ISBN 0915707780.