You make a mess, you clean it up: that's the classic principle behind Superfund, which forces polluters to pay for the clean-up of their messes. Forced, that is: Today, September 30th, marks the one year anniversary of the bankruptcy of the Superfund Trust Fund. The federal Superfund toxic waste program ran out of polluter-contributed funds exactly a year ago, leaving taxpayers with the entire bill. Once the Bush administration refused to honor the polluter pays principle, they stopped holding big oil and chemical companies accountable for the messes they made. “Across the country important cleanups will not be funded, and the health risks persist for our families and communities,” said Carl Pope, Sierra Club Executive Director. “The polluting companies who left this toxic mess in our backyard should be cleaning it up, not taxpayers. The Bush administration needs to realize that it’s time to stop putting polluters before the public.” In 1995, Congress failed to renew the taxes which funded the trust fund, shifting the burden of financing cleanups to taxpayers and away from polluters. The Bush administration is the first since the Superfund program began not to support the polluter pays principle. On September 30, 2003, the trust fund went bankrupt of polluter pays dollars, meaning that taxpayers are now shouldering the entire cost of the program. While polluters may no longer have to pay to clean up the messes they leave in communities, the price tag on clean-ups has jumped dramatically: from $300 million in 1995 to more than a billion dollars this year -- a jump of more than 300 percent. This year an estimated 46 sites in 27 states will not be funded or will be inadequately funded. --from the Sierra Club