Florida Base on list DOD doesn't want to clean up

DoD fights EPA on hazardous waste cleanups

By Dina Cappiello - The Associated Press
Posted : Tuesday Jul 1, 2008 6:50:32 EDT

WASHINGTON — The Defense Department is refusing to comply with orders or sign contracts to clean up 11 hazardous waste sites, and has asked the White House and Justice Department to intervene on its behalf.

The dispute between the Pentagon and the Environmental Protection Agency has simmered over the last year since the EPA began issuing orders compelling the Air Force and Army to clean up four properties where contamination poses an “imminent and substantial” risk to public health and the environment. To date, the Pentagon has agreed to comply with only one of those orders, at an Air Force missile plant near Tucson, Ariz.

In separate letters in May to the White House budget office and the Justice Department, Pentagon officials challenged the EPA’s authority to issue orders under other environmental laws to force Superfund cleanups at Air Force bases in New Jersey and Florida and at the Army’s Fort Meade in Maryland. The Defense Department dismissed the EPA’s claim that soil and groundwater pollution at the three bases was dangerous enough to warrant such action.

Senate Environment Committee Chairwoman Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., agreed Monday with a request by Maryland’s two Democratic senators, Barbara Mikulski and Benjamin Cardin, to hold a hearing on the Pentagon’s noncompliance with the EPA’s orders.

At eight other Superfund sites, the Pentagon is objecting to “additional provisions” that it says the EPA added to proposed cleanup contracts. Those eight facilities are in Massachusetts, Virginia, Maryland, Alabama, New Jersey, Florida and Hawaii.
go here for more
http://www.armytimes.com/news/2008/06/ap_hazardous_waste_063008/