Word: superfunded
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...Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has suffered its worst year ever. Charged by environmentalist critics with moving slowly in toxic-waste cleanup efforts, the Agency is currently under investigation by the Justice Department and a half-dozen congressional subcommittees seeking answers to allegations of mismanagement of the $1.6 billion Superfund and of the use of cleanup decisions for political leverage. Each day the list of charges grows longer, highlighting the agency's failure to meet its responsibilities, and raising serious questions about Burford's understanding of her job description...
...center of the congressional investigations is the $1.6 billion Superfund program, created by Congress three years ago to clean up the nation's most dangerous toxic-waste dumps. On Friday, House leaders were given a new EPA audit showing that the agency cannot account for $53.6 million, almost one-third of the 1982 appropriation for the Superfund. "At best, EPA officials have been sloppy and incompetent," said Democratic Representative James Scheuer...
...Gorsuch elicited little sympathy from lawmakers of either party. The Senators warned her that they plan to get to the bottom of charges of mismanagement and political favoritism that taint the Superfund program. Chided Democratic Senator Max Baucus: "I think there's a feeling in the committee, and the country, that the EPA no longer cares...
...Lavelle's "reluctance to enforce" the program. "I don't view the business community as our major constituency. I view the American people as our major constituents," she said. "My policy has been, and will continue to be, to request a strong enforcement policy for the Superfund...
...Congress was not convinced. At week's end Dingell's subcommittee voted to widen the Superfund probe by issuing new subpoenas for testimony from Lavelle, Gorsuch and 35 other EPA employees, plus dozens of additional documents. Democratic Congressman James J. Howard of New Jersey, chairman of the House Public Works Committee, demanded an FBI investigation of a recently installed paper shredder outside Lavelle's office that the EPA said had been used to destroy "excess copies" of documents withheld from the House. The EPA told Scheuer that Lavelle's appointment calendars, which he had subpoenaed...