Acting on a request by the federal Environmental Protection Agency, Rep. Earl Blumenauer , D-OR, and Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-NJ, have introduced companion bills to finance the cleanup of orphaned hazardous waste sites.

Love Canal in western NY, home to one of the nation's most notorious toxic messes, was cleaned up with Superfund help.Blumenauer's bill would raise about $19 billion over 10 years by imposing excise taxes on oil producers, refineries, chemical manufacturers and a few other industries.  It has a good chance to pass the House of Representatives, but "industry is expected to push back hard in the Senate," the New York Times reported.

Since 1995, when a Republican-controlled Congress refused to renew the corporate taxes that replenish the Superfund, the remediation of abandoned hazardous waste sites has dropped dramatically because it has depended on the vicissitudes of annual appropriations.

The so-called orphan fund had financed cleanups of about 25 percent of the estimated 1,200 locations currently designated federal Superfund sites before it ran out of money. The list keeps growing, but the pace of cleanup keeps slowing, according to the newspaper.