maybe they should make it the law that companies have to pay for cleaning up anything they polluted?
We kind-of do have that, but it’s woefully inadequate.
They’re called reclamation bonds, and they’re required to be paid before permits are issued for certain activities, most often mining. When a mine closes, the company is supposed to remediate the area and make sure the mine doesn’t post any human or environmental dangers. Upon completion, they get their bond money back. Think of it like a security deposit on a rental apartment.
In practice, remediation is expensive, so the mine owners often just abandon ship and forfeit the bonds since the bond amounts are less than the reclamation costs. This is like having a $500 security deposit on an apartment but doing $5,000 worth of damage before moving out. You don’t get your $500 back, but you also don’t have to pay $4,500 to repair the damage you’ve caused.
This leaves the state environmental agency (read: taxpayers) responsible to clean up the difference. If the damage is bad enough, that’s where Superfund often comes in.
Why not increase the bond amounts or do X or Y? Well, those are all good ideas, but when your state is run by coal barons, there’s little incentive for them to fix things 😠