BOXER WANTS RENEWED TAX ON POLLUTERS.Byline: Bill Hillburg Washington Bureau WASHINGTON - Citing flagging federal Superfund efforts to clean up toxic sites, Sen. Barbara Boxer Barbara Levy Boxer (born November 11, 1940) is an American politician and the current junior U.S. Senator from the State of California. A member of the Democratic Party, Boxer was first elected to the U.S. introduced ``polluter pays'' legislation Tuesday that would reintroduce taxes on the oil and chemical industries. Her bill would levy excise taxes excise taxes, governmental levies on specific goods produced and consumed inside a country. They differ from tariffs, which usually apply only to foreign-made goods, and from sales taxes, which typically apply to all commodities other than those specifically exempted. on oil, chemicals and related products and would also slap an ``environmental income tax'' on industry profits in excess of $2 million. The money would go into a Superfund Trust Fund. ``You make a mess, you clean it up. We all heard that from our moms,'' the California Democrat said at a Capitol Hill press conference. Congress in 1986 approved a Superfund Trust Fund tax on industry that expired in 1995 and was not renewed amid strong opposition from Republicans and industry lobbyists. Boxer and other supporters claim that, without an infusion of new funds, cleanups will be curtailed or delayed at hundreds of highly toxic highly toxic Occupational medicine adjective Referring to a chemical that 1. Has a median lethal dose–LD50 of ≤ 50 mg/kg when administered orally to 200-300 g albino rats 2. Superfund sites. They noted that, as recently as 2000, the EPA EPA eicosapentaenoic acid. EPA abbr. eicosapentaenoic acid EPA, n.pr See acid, eicosapentaenoic. EPA, n. was conducting cleanups on more than 85 sites per year nationwide. This year, the total is down to 40 sites. More than a dozen Southern California Southern California, also colloquially known as SoCal, is the southern portion of the U.S. state of California. Centered on the cities of Los Angeles and San Diego, Southern California is home to nearly 24 million people and is the nation's second most populated region, sites are on the EPA's Superfund priority list, including landfills and former or current sites of aerospace, chemical and oil industry operations. There are two identified San Fernando Valley San Fernando Valley Valley, southern California, U.S. Northwest of central Los Angeles, the valley is bounded by the San Gabriel, Santa Susana, and Santa Monica mountains and the Simi Hills. area sites and two in Glendale. These are known as the North Hollywood site in the eastern San Fernando Valley, the Crystal Springs site to the east of the Valley, the Verdugo site adjacent to La Crescenta and the Pollock site in the southeastern Valley adjacent to Glendale. The measure faces an uphill battle in the Republican-controlled Senate. President George W. Bush's proposed 2003-04 budget calls for no new taxes and instead allots $1.39 billion, up $150 million from current levels, for Superfund site cleanups. |
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