The Trump administration’s top official in EPA’s land office is focused on expediting Superfund hazardous waste remediation, in part by loosening cleanup standards.
“We need to make decisions faster and move forward faster,” said Steven Cook, principal deputy assistant administrator for the agency’s Office of Land and Emergency Management, during an American Bar Association conference Thursday.
That involves state leaders, retraining project managers and rethinking acceptable cleanup levels for dangerous chemicals at Superfund sites, Cook said.
Site remediation for Superfund sites historically gets delayed decades due to insufficient funding and lengthy, complicated legal battles. More than half of the 1,343 Superfund sites were listed more than 25 years ago and still await full remediation.
