National Contingency Plan

The development of tlie emergency planning and response actions under CERCLA is based primarily on a national contingency plan that was developed under the Clean Water Act. Although the actions of CERCLA liave the capabilities to handle haziirdous and toxic releases, tlie act was primarily directed tow ard the cleanup of abandoned haztirdous waste sites. 

Both removal and remedial actions may be carried out at the same site. To accomplish these tasks, CERCLA has given cleanup authority to U.S. EPA, has established the Hazardous Substance Response Trust Fund (Superfund) to finance the remedial actions at CERCLA sites, has initiated a procedure for the emergency response to accidental spills, and has imposed cleanup liability on those responsible. The National Contingency Plan (NCP) was developed in 1982 and in 1985 as the regulatory framework to guide these responses. 

National Contingency Plan Created by CERCLA to define the federal response authority and responsibility for oil and hazardous materials spills. The regulations are codified at 40 CFR300. 

CERCLA also enabled the revision of the U.S. National Contingency Plan (NCP). The NCP provides the guidelines and procedures needed to respond to releases and threatened releases of hazardous substances, pollutants, or contaminants. The NCP also established the NPL. 

First of all, the CERCLA requires all hazardous waste releases over a prescribed threshold, known as reportable quantities (RQs), to be reported to National Response Center. Action is taken from that point to determine if it will be a CERCLA site. The CERCLA also established development of a National Contingency Plan. This plan includes all procedures for handling hazardous waste in the United States. The act also requires the creation of an uncontrolled hazardous waste site ranking system (HRS). The HRS determines if a site should be placed on the National Priorities List (NPL), which is a list of all the Superfund sites. 

Risk Assessment Under the Revised National Contingency Plan of Superfund... 

The 1980 Congressional revision of the National Contingency Plan, now known as the Superfund Bill, is effectively a compromise between sharply differing positions. It calls for priority setting to identify the most hazardous sites, and this in turn requires explicit assessment of the risks from the sites. 

As the White House discussion wore on, an idea developed to bridge between the polarized positions. The idea was that the National Contingency Plan (NCP) for handling spills under Section 311 of the Clean Water Act could be expanded and tailored to provide a vehicle for making reasonable and prioritized decisions about response actions and the level of clean-up. The revised NCP idea was written up in several tentative drafts, but the White House meetings and the White House effort broke up after Jimmy Carter lost the 1980 election. 

When the Lame Duck session of the 96th Congress opened in late November, 1980, the Senate staff tried once more to move a Superfund bill. This time they offered a compromise substitute which used a revised National Contingency Plan as the center of an integrated scheme to define a reasonable level of clean-up. This substitute was ultimately enacted with few amendments. 

Section 105 directs the President to revise the National Contingency Plan (NCP) (formerly limited to emergency response under Section 311 of the Clean Water Act) to include a new "hazardous substance response plan" setting out procedures and standards for response actions. This revision may be adopted only after notice and opportunity for public comment. 

Section 104 of Superfund authorizes the President to remove or remedy any release or threatened release to the environment of any hazardous substance, as defined in Section 101(14) of the Act, or any other containment which may present an "imminent and substantial danger" to the public health or the environment. He may accomplish this by removing the hazardous substance, or by taking "any other response measure," unless he determined that such removal or remedy will be done by some responsible person. Regardless of which course the President chooses, Section 104(a)(1) states that it must be "consistent with the national contingency plan." Section 111(a) directs that the costs of such federal response be borne by the response fund created by the Act. 

As it stands now the EPA has made the NCP applicable to private clean-up as well as governmental clean-up in its Proposed Revisions to the National Contingency Plan (5 ). If the NCP is ultimately promulgated substantially as proposed, it is likely that the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia will uphold it as within EPA s discretion. In the meantime attention of both industry and environmental groups has focused on the details of the Proposed Revisions. 

EPA has not specified, however, that the National Priority List will be part of the National Contingency Plan, and there is still controversy over the procedure for making up the list and the function of the list. 

Chemical Manufacturers Association Comments on the Draft Revision to the National Contingency Plan, June 30, 1981, pp. 40-46. 

CMA Comments on the Proposed Revisions to the National Contingency Plan, April 28, 1982, pp. 3-5. 

From the start, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has been inescapably involved in this problem through the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act and earlier legislation, but since 1979 it became evident that EPA s normal resources were quite inadequate to deal with the overall problem in a timely way. Therefore in late 1980 the Comprehensive Environmental Compensation and Liability Act of 1980 (the Superfund Act) was passed. The Act revises a more limited National Contingency Plan to permit response to hazardous substances and to provide extra funds for EPA to tackle the problem. 

Listed on the EPA s national contingency plan, http //www.epa.gov/OEM/content/lawsregs/ ncpover.htm... 

Remediations are conducted according to the National Contingency Plan and refer to permanent cleanups. 

General remediation process is specified under the uperfund s National Contingency Plan as follows ... 

CERCLA was amended in 1986 by the Superfund Amendments and Re-authorlzatlon Act (SARA). This changed the cleanup approach, increased the Involvement of the public in cleanup, and established a cleanup fund for superfund sites. The enactment of CERCLA/SARA has spawned a number of related acts that address the notification of the affected community and response plans. The most important of these arc the Emergency Planning and Community Right-To-Know Act (EPCRA) and the National Contingency Plan (NCP) enacted in 1986 and 1990, respectively. 

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