🚀 go-pugleaf

SMALL BUSINESS REMEDIATION ACT OF 1995 H.R. 2522
Oct-24-95 (EXTENSIONS OF RFMARKS)  SMALL BUSINESS REMEDIATION ACT OF
1995

Note: This document is the unofficial version of the
     Congressional Record. The printed Congressional
     Record produced by the Government Printing Office
     is the only official version.

PART   CONGRESSIONAL RECORD
(EXTENSIONS OF REMARKS)
DATE   October 24, 1995
PAGE
TITLE

TEXT

               SMALL BUSINESS REMEDIATION ACT OF 1995

                    _ _ _ _ _ _ _    _ _ _ _ _

                          HON. JOE BARTON
                              OF TEXAS
                  IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
                     TUESDAY, OCTOBER 24, 1995
 Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, the
environmental legislation that I am introduciny
today, the Small Business Remediation Act of 1995,
is designed to ensure that small busincsses and
landowners will not be subjected to unreasonable
remediation liability for drycleaning fluids.  The
intent of this bill is to strike a balance between
adequate environmental protection and the
avoidance of needlessly costly remediation not
justified by human health exposure.
 To fill the void in EPA's cleanup standards for
the drycleaning fluid perchlorethylene (perc), the
proposed legislation uses an extrapolation from
another Federal agency, the Occupational Safety
and Health Adminis~ration (OSHA), which already
has a standard covering an estimated 99.9 percent
of all exposure to perc.  Thls is a rigorous
standard required by law to adequately protect
workers from harmful effects of a chemical, even
if they are exposed 8 hours a day, 40 hours a
week, f~r their entire working lives.  Recognizing
the difference between workp1ace and environmental
standards such as the 'healthy worker' effect and
the potential exposure in the environment of 24
rather than 8 hours a day, the bill sets a safety
margin or an entire order of magnitude.  That is,
the exposure standard for remed1ation in thls bill
10 times stricter than OSHA allows for an entire
working lifetime.  If OSHA even lowers its
standard, the reme~iatlon standard set in this
bill will follow accordingly.
                                                           PAGE E20C-
 The bill seeks to address the real risks from
perc exposure.  It seeks to change the
well-intentioned, hopefully apocryphal, process ln
which standards are selected to protect children
even from eating tons of dirt for 70 years.
Instead, an independent government scientific body
will simply determine the equivalent exposure the
general public faces, using realistic exposure and
absorption assumptions.  That information, plus
the OSIIA standard, will be used to calculate the
proper amount of remediation necessary.
Importantly, the bill protects all people from
real human exposure by explicitly declaring it
does not change existing Federal standards under
the Safe Drinking Water Act.
While this bill does not specifically address
third-party liability, it should remove all or
most of that threat.  If remediation is not
necessary, except in the case of significant
human exposure, and there is a congressional
finding based on OSHA standards and the
calculations of the National Institutes of
Health that any health risks are small, it is
difficult to see how there could be serious
litigation, either under the environmental
statutes or the common law.
 I believe this bil] is consistent with the
Superfund reform legislation introduced last
week and other regulatory reform legislation
which seeks to relate environmental costs to
real benefits.  By doing so, the bill will
benefi~ not only the tens of thousands of
small drycleaners and their employees but also
shopping mall owners, insurance companies,
banks, and consumers. They will be free from
the fear of crushing liability from an ordered
remediation that could cost them a lifetime of
savings, merely for such pointless
requirements as cleaning up soil behind a
shopping center to arbitrary pristine levels.
 
I look forward to working with my colleagues
to pass this mportant bill.

                                            1
SEC. 2. FINDINGS AND INTENT OF CONGRESS.
 (a) The Congress declares that the public
should be protected from the risk of waste or
spilled solvents and other chemicals in the
soil, surface water, groundwater, and other
environmental media.
 (b) The Congress finds that the remediation
requirements for spilled or waste chemical
substances are often inconsistent,
conflicting, and may impose a burden that
bears little relationship to the potential
harrn to the environment and that these
requirements pose a special burden on small
businesses and landowners.
PAGE E~00
 (c) Congress intends that standards shall be
set for remediation that, with an adequate
margin of safety, will protect public health
from significant risk from these chemicals and
below which level remediation will be
permitted but not required.
 (d) Congress resolves that to implement these
conclusions a maximum level of remediation in
soil, surface water, groundwater, and other
environmerltal media shall be set, initially,
for solvents for the dry cleaning industry.
SEC. 3. STANDARD FOR CLEAN-UP.
PAGE E2001
 The maximum level of remediation of dry
cleaning solvents ln soil, surface water,
groundwater, and other environmental media
that a Federal, State, local agency, or court
may require of a person engaged in dry
cleaning or the owner of land or a facility in
which such a person is conducting dry cleaning
shall be one-tenth the equivalent exposure of
the workplace standard for such solvents
established by the Secretary of Labor under
the Occupational Safety and Health Act of
1970.
             SEC. ~. CALCULATION OF EQUIVALENT EXPOSURE
 (a) In consultation with the Administrators
of ~he Occupational Safety and Health
Administration and the Environmental
Protection Agency, the National Institute of
Environmental Health Sciences shall, within 6
months of the date of the enactment of this
Act, publish in the Federal Register its
computation, based on reali.stlc scientific
assumptions, of equivalent exposure by
ingestion, inhalation, and absorption indices
for the general public, for soil, surface
water, groundwater, and other environmcntal
media in nonoccupational circumstances.
 
 

                          PAGE E2001

 (b) The equivalent exposure shall be
calculated from the workplace standard for
dry clean�ng solvents whlch assures on the
basis of the best available evidence that no
employee will suffer material impairment of
health or functional capacity even if such
employee has regular exposure for the
employee's entlre worklng lifetime.
    SEC. 5. AUTHORIZATION TO REMEDIATE AT A LOWER LEVEL THAN THE
                   MAXIMUM LEVEL OF REMEDIATION.
  Nothing in thls Act -
PAGE E2001
 (1) shall preempt or otherwise prevent a
Federal, State, or local government or
private party from remediating soil, surface
water, groundwater, or other cnvironmental
media to a lower level than the maximum level
of remediation at its own cost and expense,
or
 (2) shall alter or affect the Federal
drinking water standards under title XIV of
the Public Health Service Act. SEC. 6.
DEFINITIONS.
PAGE E200
For purposes of this Act:
 (1) The term 'other environmental media'
means air and organlc and inorganic material.
 (2) The term 'equivalent exposure' means the
amount of d ChemlC substance found in air,
surface water, groundw~er, and other
environmental media which is equivalent,
under general and realistic conditions of
human exposure, absorption, and toxicity, to
that of the workplace standard for that
substance.
PAGE E2001
 (3) The term 'maximum level of remediation'
means one-tenth the equivalent exposure and
is deemed fully protective of human health.
 (4) The term 'workplace standard for dry
cleaning solvents' means the standard
established by the Secretary of Labor under
section �(b)(5) of the Occupational Safety
and Health Act of 1970 as the time-weighted
average and set forth in section 1810.1000
Z-2 of title 29 of the Code of Federal
Regulations.