Mr. Chairman, members of the subcommittee, good morning.  I am pleased to have the opportunity to testify today.

I have been to Capitol Hill many times over the past five years to discuss reform of our nation's toxic waste program. I have appeared before this subcommittee, as well, on many occasions. And I will gladly come back again and again -- as many times as needed -- if it means that we can arrive at reform legislation that will make our nation's communities cleaner, safer, and healthier.

We will support a bill that builds on the great strides the Clinton Administration has made through our administrative reforms -- reforms that have made the Superfund program faster, fairer, and more efficient.

We will support a bill that protects the public health and the environment first -- that is premised on our belief that no child will have to grow up near a toxic waste site.

We will support a bill that protects the "little guys" -- the mom-and-pop businesses -- from becoming unfairly tangled in Superfund litigation.

If we work together, I believe we can arrive at such a bill. We all share the goal of getting these sites cleaned up as fast and as fairly as possible. No one wants to see a neighborhood struggling with the blight of toxic waste. No one wants to see a community held back by this pollution.

That's why the reforms we already have put in place are so important, and why they must remain at the heart of any Superfund reform legislation.

Let me talk about this progress for a moment. Thanks to these reforms, Superfund now provides faster cleanups, and at lower cost than it did several years ago.

On average, we have cut more than two years off the time it takes to clean up a Superfund site. Now I know that the General Accounting Office, using a very small sample of unfinished portions of Superfund sites, estimated that cleanup times have actually increased. I can assure you those estimates do not reflect the actual results we have been achieving at Superfund sites since we carried out our administrative reforms.

We are cleaning up sites 20 percent faster than before this administration came to office. In the past five years, we have finished cleaning up more than 350 sites -- with more sites completed during this Administration than in the previous 12 years combined. That is a record we can be proud of.

Altogether, we have finished cleaning up 509 sites. In fact, nearly 90 percent of all Superfund sites are either cleaned up or in progress.

To finish the job, the President has committed to doubling the current pace of Superfund by cleaning up a total of 900 toxic waste sites through the year 2001 -- that's two-thirds of the nation's Superfund sites -- and we are urging Congress to supply the funding we need to get this done.

Yes, we have made and will continue to make Superfund faster. We also have made it fairer. We have made great progress helping the "little guy" out of the Superfund process --churches and girl scout troops and mom-and-pop businesses that do not belong in the litigation web that so often surrounds a Superfund site.

Through our administrative reforms we have removed more than 10,000 small parties from the liability system, which means they can spend their dollars on cleanup, not on burdensome legal costs.

But let's be realistic. Superfund liability is key to ridding the nation of the scourge of toxic waste. It generates funding for 75 percent of Superfund cleanups and it ensures that we follow through on our belief that those who created the mess should pay to clean it up.

There are some who argue that these dollars should be spent to reimburse those people who had to pay to clean up these toxic waste sites. We believe we should spend our Superfund dollars first and foremost on protecting public health and our environment. We need to spend that money cleaning up "orphan" sites, where the responsible parties no longer exist or cannot be determined.

Which brings me to your bill Mr. Chairman, H.R. 3000. Superfund reform legislation must build upon the success of our administrative reforms. It must reflect the current state of the Superfund program. We must not base Superfund legislation on outdated anecdotes and old misperceptions about the program.

I know you and the members of the subcommittee have worked hard for the past three years to develop Superfund reform legislation and I appreciate that work. However, H.R. 3000 is not a bill the Administration can support. I must strongly oppose this bill.

We cannot support the bill's broad liability exemptions for all generators and transporters of hazardous waste sent to a site before 1987. This would shift enormous cleanup costs from those responsible for the toxic waste pollution to the taxpayers. It would reopen hundreds of settlements, generating new rounds of expensive litigation that could create major cleanup delays.

We cannot support the bill's remedy provisions, as it appears they put the cost of cleanup before protection of public health and the environment, especially when considering cleanup of ground water contamination.

We cannot support a bill that seriously hamstrings EPA's ability to respond at a hazardous waste site or spill -- or to compel action by a responsible party. Under the bill, states would be able to assume Superfund cleanup responsibility by default and without significant public participation.

We cannot support a bill that ignores one of the areas where there is almost universal consensus, the need to clean up and promote economic development at brownfields sites throughout our Nation. This bill fails to provide funding for brownfields site assessments or cleanup.

Mr. Chairman, let me say again that I believe we can work together and arrive at a bill that we can support -- one everyone here can support. Our goals are the same: making Superfund work better for the American people.

Let's continue to talk, to find ways together to make this legislation protect public health and the environment, and spare the small parties from litigation.

EPA stands ready to work with Congress on a bill that builds on our successes, that moves us forward to a new level of effectiveness. We owe this to the millions of Americans who live with a toxic waste site in their communities.

I would be pleased to answer any questions you or the subcommittee members may have.