Backlog of toxic Superfund cleanups grows under Trump

Source: Associated Press

Backlog of toxic Superfund cleanups grows under Trump

By ELLEN KNICKMEYER, MATTHEW BROWN and ED WHITE
January 2, 2020

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration has built up the biggest backlog of unfunded toxic Superfund cleanup projects in at least 15 years, nearly triple the number that were stalled for lack of money in the Obama era, according to 2019 figures quietly released by the Environmental Protection Agency over the winter holidays.

The accumulation of Superfund projects that are ready to go except for money comes as the Trump administration routinely proposes funding cuts for Superfund and for the EPA in general. The four-decade-old Superfund program is meant to tackle some of the most heavily contaminated sites in the U.S. and Trump has declared it a priority even while seeking to shrink its budget.

“There hasn’t been a sense of urgency,” said Violet Donoghue, who has lived for 31 years on Bon Brae Street in St. Clair Shores, Michigan. Toxic PCBs have poisoned some local soil, water and fish at nearby Lake St. Clair, and the neighborhood is one of the 34 Superfund sites where cleanup projects languished for lack of money in 2019.

“I feel many people have been harmed, but that’s only my opinion,” Donoghue said. She said the last word from the EPA was that soil would be removed from the front of her house. “Now when they say they’re cleaning it, I say, ‘OK, give me the date,’” she said.

The unfunded projects are in 17 states and Puerto Rico. They range from abandoned mines that discharged heavy metals and arsenic in the West to an old wood pulp site in Mississippi and a defunct dry cleaner that released toxic solvents in North Carolina.

-snip-

Read more: https://apnews.com/a7b70f21b6c75f95210112390cc813ad

______________________________________________________________________

Related: Superfund Sites with Unfunded New Construction Projects (Environmental Protection Agency)