A Times Editorial

Making a super mess

EPA officials give reason for the public's lack of confidence in the Stauffer Superfund site cleanup.

© St. Petersburg Times, published June 8, 2000

With skepticism growing of the plan to clean up the Stauffer Superfund site near Tarpon Springs, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency should be working to gain public confidence. Instead, two EPA officials walked out of a meeting this week rather than answer residents' questions or listen to criticism.

The meeting to inform the public on changes to the cleanup plan was thwarted when key officials with the EPA and the U.S. Department of Justice -- which sign off on the plan -- failed to show. Then two lower ranking EPA representatives announced that they would give a brief presentation, take 10 minutes of questions and leave.

Not even U.S. Rep. Michael Bilirakis (R-Palm Harbor), who sponsored the meeting, could stop the early exit. The audience responded with catcalls and sounds of a chicken clucking to punctuate the EPA's farcical behavior.

For decades, phosphorus was produced at the now-defunct plant on the Anclote River, and the process left behind dangerous wastes that include arsenic and radioactive material. The EPA's cleanup plan would pile 300,000 cubic yards of toxic soil into mounds and cap them. But the EPA Ombudsman, an independent office, questioned the technology that the EPA said would keep the waste from leaking into the aquifer.

That is only one of several significant issues that need to be resolved:

Recently, EPA Ombudsman Bob Martin's office temporarily lost, and then regained, its EPA funding to investigate Stauffer and other Superfund sites in what looked like an intimidation tactic. EPA officials should support -- not hinder -- Martin's investigative role, which is necessary to maintain public trust in the Superfund process.

The cleanup plan is awaiting U.S. District Judge Susan Bucklew's approval, but the legal process should be delayed until the parties clear up questions about corporate ownership of the property, protection of the public water supply and EPA acceptance of the state's more stringent arsenic cleanup levels. Once the plan is approved, it could be too late to force the EPA to address shortcomings.

EPA officials showed their arrogance by walking out of the meeting, and the agency appears to be more concerned about the polluter's feelings than the public's. Rep. Bilirakis has asked the EPA to apologize for its behavior. That would be a start.

EPA Administrator Carol Browner should demand that regional administrators in Atlanta restore credibility to the process. The EPA is going to have to clean up its own act before it can be trusted to clean up the Stauffer Superfund site.

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