EPA failed to fund many recommended waste
cleanups
By BILL
LAMBRECHT
Post-Dispatch
01/08/2004
WASHINGTON - The Environmental Protection Agency's inspector general said
Thursday that the EPA did not provide enough money last year for hazardous waste
cleanups recommended by the agency's own administrators.
The unfunded Superfund projects included:
A $12.5 million cleanup at the old Jennison-Wright railroad tie plant in Granite
City.
A $6.8 million cleanup at the abandoned Circle Smelting Corp. in Beckemeyer in
Clinton County.
A $400,000 investigation of lead contamination at Annapolis, Mo.
$50,000 to determine whether chemical threats exist at an old Union Electric
site a mile north of the Arch between Interstate 70 and the river.
They were among 29 sites across the country for which the EPA rejected its
regional officials' recommendations for $175 million of work, according to EPA
Inspector General Nikki L. Tinsley.
As a result, "total project costs may increase and actions needed to fully
address the human health and environmental risk posed by the contaminants are
delayed," Tinsley wrote in a report requested by Congress.
The findings prompted criticism from Democrats in Congress who oversee the
Superfund program. Rep. John Dingell of Michigan, the ranking Democrat on the
House Energy and Commerce Committee, said the administration's Superfund program
had declined for two years running and likely would do so again this year.
Dingell said in a statement that in addition to slowing progress in toxic
cleanups, the EPA "is also preventing the beneficial reuse of the sites and
harming economic redevelopment."
An EPA official who declined to speak on the record blamed Congress and noted
that a $150 million increase in Superfund spending this year had been turned
down.
The decision on the Jennison-Wright plant marked the second year in a row that
EPA officials in Washington wouldn't pay for a project ready to begin. The old
railroad tie plant, which closed in 1989, is contaminated with creosote,
pentachlorophenol and dioxin compounds.
Kathy Andria, president of American Bottom Conservancy, an advocacy group in
East St. Louis, said she has seen children playing at the site.
"They climb on the branches of trees and drop down into the site. It's
enticing to them because it is forbidden," she said.
Reporter Bill Lambrecht
E-mail: blambrecht@post-dispatch.com
Phone: 202-298-6880