for cleaning up the decades-old toxic paper waste buried under the San Jacinto River has hit yet another snag, prompting advocates and residents to gather Thursday to urge environmental regulators to push ahead.
They met at the east Harris County site to plead publicly for the Environmental Protection Agency to disregard what the advocates characterized as inappropriate push-back from the companies responsible for addressing the hazardous muck.International Paper Company and McGinnes Industrial Maintenance Corporation were supposed to finish their “pre-final” plan for cleanup by June 26.
An earlier plan involved sealing off these pits with some sort of wall, draining the water inside and scooping the material out. But company officials said in their letter that they found much more waste than they previously understood existed, which made the situation more complicated, risky and costly. They said it was impossible to do all of the excavation “in the dry.
McGinnes said in a statement that the new information was “significant” and not known when the original approach was decided.