FUNDING

Questions Remain Over Which Sites Will Get Few Or No 2002 Federal Dollars

Congressional attention to Superfund intensified this summer after the Environmental Protection Agency's inspector general released a report saying that not all sites that need funding for cleanup this year were getting money.

	Horinko
	Tinsley PHOTOS BY STEPHEN DELANEY

The report, issued in June, indicated that the agency's 10 regional offices, which oversee cleanups, asked for some $450 million for Superfund activities in fiscal 2002--but EPA had provided only $224 million to them. The report also identified 33 Superfund sites that had not received funding in 2002. Among them is a fairly wellknown site, the Chemical Insecticide Corp. in Edison, N.J., which processed pesticides from 1954 to 1970.

The report did not give the whole Superfund picture for 2002, Marianne L. Horinko, EPA assistant administrator for solid waste and emergency response, said at a July 31 Senate hearing. She told the Senate Environment & Public Works Subcommittee on Superfund, Toxics, Risk & Waste Management that Superfund money is doled out throughout the fiscal year, which ends on Sept. 30. Congress holds back millions of the dollars it appropriates for Superfund until Sept. 1, Horinko said, adding that EPA planned to distribute more money in September.

"The report represents a snapshot in time," EPA Inspector General Nikki L. Tinsley agreed. "If the same information were requested today, some of the figures could be different."

Horinko continued, "Notwithstanding recent press reports, no Superfund sites have had cleanup construction suspended, and sites that pose an immediate risk to public health or the environment have been and will continue to be addressed."

But Tinsley had a different take. She told the Senate panel, "When sufficient funds are not provided, the risk presented by [a] site is not fully addressed." In addition, Tinsley said officials in EPA regional offices in the Southeast, South Central states, and West "expressed concern over the lack of funding for sites ready to start remedial activities." An official in EPA's Midwest office told the inspector general's staff that remediation of several so-called megasites--ones that are expected to cost up to $140 million to clean up--may have to be stretched out over many years.

Rep. John D. Dingell (D-Mich.), ranking Democrat on the House Energy & Commerce Committee, and Rep. Frank Pallone Jr. (D-N.J.) requested the report on Superfund spending . Sen. James M. Jeffords (I-Vt.), chairman of the Senate Environment & Public Works Committee, and Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), who chairs that panel's Superfund subcommittee, recently asked Tinsley to update that report to cover all of fiscal 2002. Jeffords and Boxer requested that Tinsley finish this work by Oct. 10.

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