Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt on Wednesday told agency staff that it’s time to get serious about cleaning up the nation’s most contaminated sites, giving himself more power over regional chiefs to make sure it gets done quickly.
“I am making it a priority to ensure contaminated sites get cleaned up,” Pruitt said, ensuring that federally designated cleanup sites under the Superfund program will be given top priority. “We will be more hands-on to ensure proper oversight and attention to the Superfund program at the highest levels of the agency and to create consistency across states.”
Pruitt sent a memo to staff on Wednesday, detailing how he will shift the agency’s decision-making process from lower-ranking regional administrators and office chiefs to himself.
“With this revised delegation, authority previously delegated to the assistant administrator for Office of Land and Emergency Management and the regional administrators to select remedies estimated to cost $50 million or more at sites shall be retained by the administrator,” the memo read.
The EPA said the administrator had always possessed the authority to sign off on Superfund cleanup efforts. But until recently “this authority had been delegated many layers into the bureaucracy, resulting in confusion among stakeholders and delayed revitalization efforts,” the agency said.
“Putting the decision of how to clean up the sites directly into the hands of the administrator will help revitalize contaminated sites faster.”
The decision came less than a week after Pruitt pledged greater support to the people of East Chicago, Ind., the site of a major EPA-led cleanup effort of lead contamination that left more than 1,000 residents last year displaced from their homes.
