The National Law Review reports:
The federal government shutdown will dramatically alter the activities of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The agency will operate with less than seven percent of its employees during the government shutdown, according to the agency’s contingency plan. Retained staff will focus on agency operations that are necessary to protect human life or property and projects that are funded with unexpired appropriations. We have summarized below what our environmental clients should know and how the government shutdown affects the EPA.
Superfund cleanups suspended
Cleanup at 505 of 800 national Superfund sites will be stopped during the shutdown, according to an EPA spokesperson. Projects will continue only where “a failure to maintain operations would pose an imminent threat to human life.”
The absence of deaths at Superfund sites was first reported in Steve Milloy’s 1995 book “Science-Based Risk Assessment: A Piece of the Superfund Puzzle.”
While there is little disagreement that toxic waste sites need to be cleaned up it is obvious that the real goal is to funnel billions of taxpayer money to union contractors. In general if a logical and intelligent person where to be in charge of one of these cleanups it could be done for billions less without a lot of the drama involved under the government control. Times Beach is a good example of the overkill used to clean up a site.