The Environmental Protection Agency announced the creation of a special task force Monday to streamline the agency’s flagship Superfund environmental cleanup program ahead of Tuesday’s release of President Trump’s fiscal 2018 budget proposal.
“I am confident that, with a renewed sense of urgency, leadership and fresh ideas, the Superfund program can reach its full potential of returning formerly contaminated sites to communities for their beneficial use,” EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt said in a memo to staff.
The EPA said the creation of the Superfund task force would be to provide recommendations within 30 days on how the EPA “can streamline and improve the Superfund program.”
The recommendations would include how to restructure and speed up the cleanup process, reducing “the burden” on cooperating parties such as states, while incentivizing parties to remediate the sites, according to the memo. The recommendations also would address how to encourage private investment to clean up the sites and promote “revitalization of properties across the country.”
The agency noted that the action follows Pruitt’s recent visit to the Superfund site in East Chicago, Ind., to tour ongoing cleanup activities of lead contamination in the surrounding community.
The memo was sent one day before the EPA is slated to release its budget proposal to Congress, which is expected to include a host of proposals to shrink the agency’s budget by at least 30 percent.
