The great toxic-waste mess oozed its way into the nation's consciousness, and its conscience, a little more than five years ago. "An environmental emergency," declared the Surgeon General in 1980. "A ticking time bomb primed to go off," warned the Environmental Protection Agency. The reaction was typically all-American: Congress created a grand-sounding "Superfund," a $1.6 billion, five-year crash program designed to clean up thousands of leaking dumps that were threatening to contaminate much of the nation's underground water supplies.
Last week that law expired, a victim of wrangling among the Senate, the House and President Reagan over how much more should...
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