Fearing High Court Suit, Activists Seek Quick EPA Plan On Hudson Cleanup

摘要

Environmentalists are urging EPA to quickly announce its plans for cleaning up the Hudson River so the agency can, if necessary, exercise key Superfund enforcement authority before the General Electric (GE) Company, which is liable for the cleanup, brings its ongoing constitutional challenge to EPA's authority to the Supreme Court.rnActivists want EPA to announce within weeks its plans for the second phase of the cleanup and hear GE's response so that the agency has time to issue a unilateral administrative cleanup order (UAO), if necessary, before the company's Dec. 29 deadline to petition the high court to review its constitutional challenge on the the issue, one environmentalist says.rnThe environmentalist says activists want a quick decision on the cleanup plan to preserve EPA's option to issue a UAO if GE does not voluntarily agree to complete the cleanup.rnThe environmentalists' push comes in the wake of a recent agreement between EPA and GE in which the agency agreed to delay a planned decision on the next phase of the cleanup until after the original October deadline.rnBut an EPA source says the agency is unlikely to decide the timing or substance of its cleanup plan until next month, though that could still leave the door open to a mandatory response from GE before the end of the year.