Reported by Cassandra Profita on OPB.

As the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency was announcing eight major cleanup agreements for the Portland Harbor Superfund Site this week, four companies were filing a petition challenging the agency’s core cleanup plan.

In their petition, which was obtained by OPB, Evraz Inc., Gunderson LLC, Schnitzer Steel Industries and Vigor Industrial argue the EPA needs to update its cleanup requirements for the Portland Harbor site before they will agree to doing their part of the cleanup.

The EPA has already rejected a similar request from the companies to scale back its targets for how clean the river needs to be, and critics say the petition is just one of many examples of these companies trying to delay a cleanup process that has already stretched on far too long.

The four companies say new data show the site is much less contaminated than older test results showed and that the new data should be used to scale back the scope and overall cost of the cleanup. OPB has reached out to the four companies and the EPA. None had immediately responded.

Read more at: https://www.opb.org/news/article/portland-harbor-superfund-cleanup-companies-petition/

And at the Portland Business Journal: https://www.bizjournals.com/portland/news/2020/03/12/portland-harbor-superfund-cleanup-hits-possible.html