EPPING — The Keefe Environmental Services site is an unassuming, grassy slope of land tucked away behind a chain-link fence just off Route 27.

It looks more like a golf course than the site of massive environmental contamination. Maybe such appearances are at the root of why most people don’t seem to notice, or worry about, the hundreds of environmental problem spots in the Granite State, and throughout the country.

“Certainly, clean air has taken a precedence over clean water,” said David Dedian, vice president of Woodard & Curran, the firm hired by state and federal authorities 25 years ago to take care of groundwater contamination at Keefe.

Keefe is part of Superfund, a federal program implemented to handle the worst-of-the-worst chemical spills in the country.

Now, nearly 30 years after the Superfund environmental law passed, the program still is struggling to cope with areas of major pollution as it steers its way through partisan quibbling over how it is funded.

Meanwhile, New Hampshire has seen dwindling resources for its Superfund sites, according to experts.

The Granite State’s 20 Superfund sites, the worst among more than 800 contaminated spots officials have identified in the state, are clustered mostly along the southern border and the Seacoast. That, historically, is where industry developed and where the pollution has been, experts say.

When it began

Superfund legislation was passed in the early 1980s, in large part in response to the Love Canal disaster near Niagara Falls, N.Y.

Love Canal was a working-class community built on a former chemical dump. When heavy rain descended in 1978, backyards were awash in chemicals that leached up from the ground. Five children were born with birth defects — one newborn girl had a cleft palate and an extra row of teeth. White blood cell counts dropped among the young and old, indicating the possibility of leukemia in the future.

Congress responded with Superfund.

The program was groundbreaking — not only in its scope, but in its approach. It was the first legislation to use the “polluter pays” principle. Whoever caused the pollution — whether through negligence, malevolence or sheer accident — would pay to clean it up.

They paid in two ways. First, those in industries likely to pollute — oil companies and chemical manufacturers — had to pay a tax. Then, if businesses were caught polluting, the cost of the cleanup would be divided among those responsible.

Taxpayers would win and polluters would lose, the thinking went.

When a new Superfund site was identified, the government would typically fork over the startup money needed to study it. Then, it would recommend a solution, billing the companies responsible.

But in the years since Superfund began, only 319 sites have been completely cleaned up, while some 1,243 remain active. The largest number of sites appeared when the law first passed in the early 1980s, when officials rushed to identify contaminated spots. But sites have continued to appear regularly since, experts say.

The last New Hampshire site to be added to the Superfund list was in Berlin in 2005.

A state strapped for cash

While Superfund hasn’t lost much money year to year — its budget has hovered between $1.2 billion and $1.5 billion since 1993 — New Hampshire officials report the dollars just don’t stretch as far as they once did.

“We’ve had, like, eight or 10 sites across the country ... taking, like, 40, 50 percent of our yearly budget,” said Dave Deegan, spokesman for the EPA in New England.

Those “mega-sites” aren’t new, but they’re big and complicated. And it only takes a few polluters dumping toxins into the ground — and then going bankrupt — to sap tremendous resources from the federal government.

There’s another problem, too.

Jim Woolford, director of the Environmental Protection Agency’s Superfund Remediation program, said the agency made a “conscious decision” to put more money into paying for the actual cleanups, not the studies that precede them.

That leaves states with a greater share of the initial cost when a site is discovered.

Officials in New Hampshire are feeling the pinch.

“We’ve been trying to do more with less for some time now, and we seem to be getting by,” said Richard Pease, who supervises federal sites for the New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services. “(But) if there was more money, we could deal with some of the problems faster.”

Whenever possible, Pease said, the state tries to find another way to clean up a contaminated site. Superfund money is limited, he said, and if the state or private industry can deal with the problem, he tries to make that happen.

Dedian, of Woodard & Curran, agreed.

“Developers will be buying sites and flipping them,” he said.

Many environmental sites sit on such valuable property that it makes financial sense for entrepreneurs to purchase the land, finish the environmental cleanup, build a development and then sell it, he said.

That leaves Superfund money for the real problem spots.

But New Hampshire officials are quietly concerned that Superfund dollars don’t stretch as far as they once did. And at the national level, some lawmakers hope to channel more money to the program.

The Washington debate

Last month, Congressman Maurice Hinchey, D-N.Y., proposed a bill that would reinstate a tax on the industries most likely to pollute the land. The tax, which was passed when Superfund was created, lapsed in December 1995, under a Republican-controlled Congress.

Hinchey’s proposal would put a 9.7-cent tax on every barrel of oil, and a tax of between 22 cents and $4.87 on every ton of chemicals manufactured or imported.

A similar bill was proposed in the Senate.

Hinchey argues that without the tax, Superfund doesn’t have the cash to deal with the mega-sites. As money is syphoned off to deal with those huge sites, less and less filters down to the small and midsized sites, like the ones in New Hampshire.

“(Superfund) doesn’t have enough money. It’s being sapped,” said Jeff Lieberson, Hinchey’s spokesman.

But attorney Michael Steinberg disagrees.

“Come on,” he said. “That’s just political hay.”

Steinberg represents eight companies, including Chevron and DuPont, that would suffer heavy taxes if Hinchey’s law passes.

Essentially, Steinberg said, the tax would call upon businesses to pay twice.

“Within (the last) 10 years, at most, we’ve switched to a mode that we’ve had ever since — that private companies perform 75 to 80 percent of the cleanups,” he said.

A tax made sense in the time when the government sued companies to pay for cleanups. Now, in most cases, the government orders companies to do the cleanups themselves. The companies pay whatever it costs, he said.

While New Hampshire’s delegation has so far stayed clear of the debate, the earliest indications of battle lines are being drawn.

“We are definitely watching it develop as an issue and are hoping that it comes (to the floor),” said Bergen Kenny, spokeswoman for Congressman Paul Hodes, D-N.H.

Meanwhile, New Hampshire Republican Sen. John Sununu released a statement about Superfund, saying, “I have and will continue to support comprehensive Superfund reform to keep costs down, reduce litigation and ensure cleanups are conducted in a timely fashion.”

Community concern

Londonderry has three Superfund sites right in its backyard, although all three have been cleaned up. They’re in the monitoring phase now.

“I’m sure when the sites were identified, there was a greater environmental concern,” said Town Manager David Caron.

But since their discovery — and the construction of a natural gas power plant in 2001 — officials have set up a special committee to study groundwater quality throughout town. Londonderry has spent more than $150,000 in the past six years, testing groundwater.

That’s why, Caron said, “I don’t have any concerns there are additional sites out here.”

That approach is a wise one, some experts say.

“Typically, the sites you don’t know about are the problem,” said Dedian, of Woodard & Curran, the firm doing work at Keefe.

Once a site is listed in the Superfund program, money is available to protect nearby homes and water supplies, Dedian said.

That’s something Paul Poley understands. The Plaistow resident lives right next to the Beede Waste Oil Superfund site, where more than 800 barrels of oil were found leaking into the groundwater when a waste disposal company there failed in the early 1990s. The 74-year-old Poley draws water from an artesian well, but doesn’t worry too much about the pollution.

His son-in-law is a chemist and tests Poley’s well water twice a year. The state tests the water once a year.

“He does a complete, thorough check because he doesn’t want his daughter, or my granddaughter, to have any problems,” Poley said.

Looking ahead

Most of the Superfund sites in the Granite State have been success stories, according to Pease, Dedian and others.

Contamination at Keefe, for instance, was discovered when the company that owned the land filed for bankruptcy in 1981. Investigators found a 700,000 gallon, synthetically lined lagoon filled with waste oil and other poisons. There were 4,100 drums of waste and huge, aboveground storage tanks.

But more than 25 years later, the site is essentially clean. Underground trenches were dug to contain the pollution. Water was pumped from the ground, treated and returned. The cleanup has cost millions since Keefe was first identified in 1981, but the most serious problems have been resolved.

Workers are monitoring for a second round of chemical contaminants now.

But the process of finding new sites, tracking down polluters and spending decades cleansing the land will continue — if not forever, then for a very long time.



Money to the EPA Superfund Program, by year

Year Nationwide Statewide

1993 $1.47 billion $3.40 million

1994 $1.38 billion $3.81 million

1995 $1.22 billion $3.73 million

1996 $1.20 billion $2.89 million

1997 $1.24 billion $2.68 million

1998 $1.28 billion $5.97 million

1999 $1.27 billion $5.62 million

2000 $1.18 billion $2.62 million

2001 $1.18 billion $2.15 million

2002 $1.18 billion $2.36 million

2003 $1.27 billion $2.36 million

2004 $1.26 billion $3.06 million

2005 $1.25 billion $1.99 million

2006 $1.24 billion $1.64 million

Sources: EPA national funding provided by the agency’s Washington, D.C., office; state funding provided by the New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services



Superfund by the numbers

There have been 1,623 sites in the history of the Superfund program, since 1981.

1,243 of those sites are active.

319 sites have been totally cleaned up.

61 sites have not yet been listed, although they are poised to join the list.

At 37 of those 61 sites, workers have already begun the cleanup process.

1,010 of the active sites are “construction complete,” which means the eventual solution — a water treatment system, for instance — has been built.

Source: the EPA office in Washington, D.C.