WASHINGTON, D.C. - Senator James Jeffords, (I-VT) and Congressional colleagues held a rally on Capitol Hill today to call on Congress to support a bill that would reinstate the Superfund fees that expired today. Jeffords appeared with U.S. Senators Barbara Boxer (D-CA), Hillary Clinton (D-NY), Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ), Jon Corzine (D-NJ) and U.S. Representative Hilda Solis (D-CA). “The Superfund Trust Fund is essential to prevent hazardous chemicals from running into our streams, blowing into our schoolyards, and contaminating our groundwater and drinking water. Yet this Administration refuses to hold corporate polluters accountable, and taxpayers - instead of these polluters - will be forced to pay $1.3 billion to clean up after them,” said Jeffords. “If the Bush Administration won’t hold polluters accountable, we will hold the Administration accountable,” he continued. Superfund was started more than twenty years ago as a solution to cleaning up heavily polluted sites. The fund’s principle sources of revenue were excise taxes on petroleum and a corporate environmental income tax. But since the fee collecting authority expired at the end of 1995, the taxpayer has slowly been picking up a larger and larger share until today, which marks the beginning of the taxpayer picking up the entire tab. There are over 70 million people who live within four miles of a Superfund site.