
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, June 22, 1990                   TAG: 9006220236
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-11   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium

EPA TO RUN SUPERFUND RISK TESTS

Responding to critics who charge that its policies have favored polluters over public health, the Environmental Protection Agency said Thursday that it no longer will allow companies responsible for dumping toxic wastes to assess health risks and the best methods of cleaning them up.

EPA officials now will conduct all risk assessments for sites on the Superfund list of the nation's most polluted dumps, a senior agency official announced at a Senate Environment and Public Works Committee hearing.

Don R. Clay, assistant EPA administrator in charge of the Superfund program, said that companies responsible for polluted sites "tend to use less conservative assumptions" than the government in assessing the risks, creating a "public perception" that polluters are downplaying the threats posed by their contamination.

Therefore, he said, "EPA will prepare all risk assessments in the future."

The risk assessment of a toxic waste site is a critical early step that measures the severity of the public health threat and influences the cost and pace of cleanup efforts.

Members of Congress, environmental groups and citizens living near the toxic sites have complained that the EPA was abdicating its regulatory role in a misguided effort to save federal money and manpower.

Thursday's EPA announcement followed a series of articles about the problems of company-led cleanups in the Los Angeles Times this week.

Clay said the agency was reversing its policy on the basis of a study comparing cleanup progress at sites run by the EPA and those turned over to the companies responsible for the pollution.

Clay said the remedies chosen at both types of sites were "fundamentally similar" but acknowledged that the EPA's credibility had been damaged by the policy of allowing the companies to decide how to clean up their messes.

"We looked at the data on 238 sites and we didn't find that much difference," Clay said. "We found differences in the nature of the sites rather than differences in who was paying and who was doing the cleanup."

Environmental groups disputed Clay's interpretation of the study's results.

by CNB