Environmental Protection Agency Disaster Recovery

Disaster recovery
Student Name
Institutional Affiliation
Disaster recovery
In the late 1970s, Congress had enacted various laws to control sources of environmental pollution. However, it had not yet addressed the issue of contamination due to the release of pollutants to the environment. The discovery of contaminated sites raised the alarm on the need to protect the public from potential harm (Bearden, 2012). As a result, Congress enacted the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA), commonly referred to as Superfund.
According to the Environmental Protection Agency (2018), the law was created to ensure to enable the government supervise the cleanup of a majority of the polluted sites to safeguard the public against harm. The enactment of the law established the prohibitions about both closed and abandoned contaminated areas. The Act provided for liability of individuals responsible for the release of the harmful waste to the sites (Phillips, 2015). Lastly, it created a trust fund to facilitate the cleanup in case no one can be held responsible for the hazardous waste on the site. The EPA uses the superfund to undertake either remedial or removal of waste sites. The agency begins by checking the site to determine whether or not it qualifies for the Superfund. Through the Hazard Ranking System, the EPA assigns a score from 0-100 (Schons, 2011). The areas that score above 28.5 are categorized as remedial sites. These sites qualify for the National Priorities List (NPL) where they are marked for cleanup in the coming years. Some of the sites that fall under this category include landfills and chemical plants. The other category is removal sites which are not on the NPL. These include oil tanker spills and factory fires.
In handling debris removal, EPA finds the Potentially Responsible Parties (PRP). The agency looks for evidence to establish the liability of entities by matching the ...