The pace of progress at superfund sites: Policy goals and interest group influence

Bureaucracies may set priorities for their workload in response to social g oals or pressures from concentrated private interests. This paper explores bureaucratic priorities empirically by studying Superfund, the federal prog ram for cleaning up contaminated sites, It examines the amount of time that sites on Superfund's National Priorities List require to complete three st ages from listing to cleanup, using an econometric method for multiple sequ ential durations. The empirical results provide little evidence that the En vironmental Protection Agency (EPA) prioritizes sites according to their ha rms. By contrast, concentrated private interests, such as liable parties an d local communities, play an important role in the EPA's priorities. Delays caused by liable parties may reduce net benefits of cleanup by 8 percent. This result suggests a benefit from funding provision of environmental qual ity and other public goods through diffuse sources, such as broad-based tax es, to avoid the detrimental effects of such concentrated interests.