St. Louis, Mo., children face “extreme health risks” and must practice emergency drills in case fire reaches radioactive waste that has lingered nearby for more than 30 years thanks to Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) bureaucratic muck, a lawmaker told a congressional panel.
Missouri Rep. Ann Wagner shared at a House Committee on Energy and Commerce panel hearing how red tape has threatened St. Louis families by delaying cleanup of a nearby landfill the EPA designated as a Superfund site – a designation that means the agency is responsible for ensuring its decontamination.
“The EPA has failed, failed more than 30 years in its cleanup of nuclear waste dating back to the Manhattan Project and World War II,” she said. The Superfund process “and particularly the EPA have failed the people of St. Louis in the most heartless manner possible.”
Children have come home from school with notices to parents saying they were “subject to extreme health risks” and that classrooms were practicing procedures “in the event the radioactive waste meets fire,” Wagner said.
“These are the experiences caused by years of EPA dereliction and inaction,” she continued. Wagner pointed to numerous bureaucratic hurdles that slowed the cleanup process, including multiple, lengthy tests and decision-making, all while new radioactive material was “consistency found.”
Those St. Louis families aren’t alone.
“I think every member of Congress around the country have problems with the slow cleanup,” Texas Democrat Rep. Gene Green said.
Ranking Member Paul Tonko, a New York Democrat, added: “Communities across our country are still dealing with toxic waste. EPA has estimated that 50 million people live within three miles of a” Superfund site.”
The EPA’s Superfund program was created in 1980 to clean up America’s most polluted locations, but 329 sites could still threaten humans, according to EPA data. Only about one-third of the 1,328 Superfund sites have been completely cleaned.
“Superfund is now some 36 years old and the truth is some cleanup projects that we are working on seem as old as the law itself,” Rep. John Shimkus said. “If the federal government is to have a role, it should be to … speed up cleanups,” but the Superfund law instead “seems to slow them down.”
“How can we make [Superfund law] more efficient?” the Illinois Republican who chairs the Subcommittee on the Environment and the Economy, said. “Can we reduce the red tape?”
It took nearly 13 years on average for those completed Superfund sites to be cleaned, while another 54 sites took at least 20 years, West Virginia Republican Rep. David McKinley said, citing at length a Daily Caller News Foundation investigation that used EPA data. Decontamination for three sites took 30 years. (RELATED: Feds Leave Dangerously Polluted Superfund Sites Uncleaned For DECADES)
EPA Assistant Administrator Mathy Stanislaus agreed to send McKinley an explanation for such prolonged cleanups and admitted Superfund challenges.
“The Superfund sites are a complicated situation,” he said. “It’s a reflection, I think … of decades of mismanagement.”
Stanislaus did not divulge who was behind that mismanagement. Instead, the official argued that the EPA has made improvements in recent years and is optimizing Superfund’s process by creating a more streamlined process and analyzing cost savings.
“There’s some opportunities to expedite the investigation process,” Stanislaus said. “There’s been some history, frankly, where an investigation has gone on too long.”
Stanislaus, Tonko, and full committee Ranking Member Frank Pallone Jr., a New Jersey Democrat, also argued that Superfund has faced funding issues due to the 1995 expiration of a tax on industries typically associated with pollution.
Low funding has “delayed cleanup, it’s delayed recovery … it’s delayed economic land use benefits,” Stanislaus said.
Congress appropriates around $1 billion to the EPA for Superfund annually – approximately one-eighth of its budget. Meanwhile, the agency’s yearly budget requests have asked for only minimal increases.
“Reinstating the Superfund tax authority would provide a stable, dedicated source of revenue for the Superfund Trust Fund,” he continued. “The reinstated tax authority is estimated to generate a revenue level of approximately $1.8 billion in 2017 to more than $2.8 billion annually by 2026. Total tax revenue over the period 2017 to 2026 is predicted to be $25.4 billion.”
Meanwhile, one EPA committee secretly decides how to spend billions from slush fund-like accounts, while another secretly decides which Superfund sites will receive appropriations. (RELATED: The EPA Stashes BILLIONS In Slush Fund-Like Accounts)
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