01/11/2002
Surrounded by small business owners, President Bush today signed into law a landmark bill
that frees small businesses from the Superfund quagmire and ends a five-year battle waged
by NFIB."With this bill, we are returning common sense to our cleanup program. We will protect innocent small business owners and employees from unfair lawsuits and focus our efforts instead on actually cleaning up contaminated sites," Bush said at the signing ceremony in Conshohocken, Penn. "The old way of doing things was to mandate, regulate and litigate."
The Small Business Liability Relief and Brownfields Revitalization Act, which passed the House and Senate in late December, protects small business owners from frustrating litigation wars waged by the EPA and big polluters that sought to hold small business owners accountable for disposing household garbage -- like potato peels and ballpoint ink pens -- in the same landfills used by big corporate polluters.
The original Superfund legislation was designed to cleanup the nation's toxic waste sites. But unknowing small business owners have been pulled into the litigation nightmare.
The new law exempts small businesses with 100 or fewer employees from liability under Superfund, if the business' disposal did not contribute significantly to the cleanup costs of the area. It also protects businesses or individuals who disposed of small amounts of hazardous material (less than 110 gallons or 200 pounds) before April 1, 2001, with certain restrictions. [For more information, see "Superfund Reform" in the Issues area of NFIB.com.]
NFIB has fought for Superfund reform for five years. Through congressional testimony, lobbying efforts and member involvement, NFIB sought to highlight the struggles faced by small business owners who became tangled in the Superfund snarl.
