W ASHINGTON – Now in its 25th year, the Superfund hazardous waste cleanup program no longer lives up to its name.

During the past four years, the number of toxic sites cleaned up annually has dropped by half and work has slowed at many others. Last year, the start of long-term cleanup work at 29 highly contaminated sites was postponed for lack of money.

The “Superfund” itself – a trust fund to pay for cleaning abandoned sites – has dwindled to zero, starved of cash since a special tax on oil and chemical companies expired a decade ago.

Environmentalists, Democratic lawmakers and state officials warn that the program created by Congress in 1980 is in serious jeopardy. They contend public health is taking a back seat to corporate interests.

“The Bush administration has devastated this program,” said New Jersey Environmental Protection Commissioner Bradley Campbell. Superfund has bogged down, he said, because of “an abandonment of the polluter-pays principle – an unwillingness to compel responsible parties to clean up at a pace communities deserve.”

The administration and members of the Republican-controlled Congress counter that steady progress continues, but that expectations must be lowered given budgetary realities.

The federal budget proposed by President Bush would give Superfund a small boost, from $1.25 billion this year to $1.28 billion in the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1. He proposed a similar increase last year, but Congress kept it at the $1.25 billion of the previous budget.

The program’s annual funding has slowly declined from $1.5 billion in 1998 and 1999. Meanwhile, the costs of cleanups are escalating, said Thomas Dunne, an assistant administrator for the federal Environmental Protection Agency who oversees the Superfund.

“In the last two years, we have not funded all the new sites that are ready to start construction. We expect we will not be able to fund a lot of new starts this year,” Dunne said. “We will have to proceed at a pace which is not as fast as we’d like, but we will do the best we can. We have to deal with what Congress gives us.”

Dunne said the EPA may not add waste sites to the 1,237 on its National Priority List, or not begin expensive new cleanups of sites on the list until those in progress are completed.

Rep. Frank Pallone, D-N.J., calls such suggestions “outrageous.” The answer, he said, is not to accept fewer and slower cleanups, but to reinstate the expired tax on industry to replenish the Superfund.

The original Superfund law was signed by President Carter in December 1980 to deal with a legacy of reckless dumping of toxic wastes.

Its passage came in the wake of environmental disasters like Love Canal, where an entire neighborhood in upstate New York was contaminated by buried chemicals, and a chemical plant fire in Elizabeth, N.J., in April 1980 that spewed toxic clouds over a 15-square-mile area.

The law held polluting companies responsible for the costs of cleanups, even if their actions were legal at the time, and created the trust fund to pay when responsible parties could not be found.

The money from the trust fund had been parceled out by Congress each year to pay the lion’s share of the work. At its peak in 1996, the fund held $3.8 billion, but the tax expired at the end of 1995, and the fund dropped to zero in 2004.

As a result, Superfund financing now competes against other environmental and governmental programs for tax dollars at a time of growing federal deficits. And the dollars available today buy much less than years ago because of inflation, Dunne said.

The EPA is working on 670 projects at 428 sites across the country. But Dunne said 52 percent of Superfund’s funding for long-term projects is committed to just nine “megasites” – large, heavily polluted sites requiring complex work.

The funding squeeze is reflected in Superfund’s bottom-line results. The program completed 87 projects in 1998, 85 in 1999 and 87 in 2000. But under Bush, the number dropped to 47 in 2001, 42 in 2002, 40 in 2003 and 40 in 2004.

Ed Hopkins, who tracks the Superfund for the Sierra Club, said the trends are worrisome. “I would say we are still making progress at cleaning up sites, but the rate of progress has slowed dramatically,” he said.

Pallone said the Superfund program is becoming “less and less viable” without the industry tax.

But Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen, R-N.J., said other avenues must be explored to make the program more effective because there is no sentiment in Washington to restore the levy.

“I’d like to see a stronger investment in the Superfund program, but it is unrealistic to think that states that have few sites and no history of industrial pollution will support reinstatement of the tax,” he said.