AREA IS NOT COMFORTED BY POLICIES OF THE EPA

The drill is now a familiar one in Cape Girardeau and the water-torture methodology is just as consistent: Environmental Protection Agency officials were in the city again last week concerning the cleanup of a Superfund site. While their attention to legal detail (in this case, holding a required public hearing) is heartening and their collective heart is in the right place, we aren't inspired to any greater feeling of environmental security by ongoing policies and demeanor of that agency.

Last week's hearing concerned the cleanup of a site where Kem-Pest Laboratories operated from 1965-1977. Five years ago, the land (three miles north of Cape Girardeau) was added to the Superfund list, having been cited as a preserve of pesticide-laced soil. The cleanup will cost at least $2 million, according to estimates, and the first phase of this endeavor was completed earlier this year.

The second phase, which will commence in January, involves the planned demolition of a building where pesticides were manufactured. A member of the family that owns the property asked at the hearing that the building be decon~taminated rather than de~stroyed, in accordance with the original EPA recommendation. While no final plan of action has been approved, the agency's project manager balked at the decontamination request, insisting that demolition would be about half as expensive. Being mindful of the public treasury is admirable, but is it possible that a building (one that hasn't been a factory in 15 years, one on the tax rolls, one that could serve a future constructive use) has soaked up so many contam~i~nants that it poses a danger now or in years to come?

The family member regarded this option simply as "extreme." A less generous appraisal might be that the EPA is employing a "scorched Earth" policy, leaving nothing standing. An article this year by a consumer education consortium called the American Council on Science and Health regarded the Superfund program as "an expensive dump site beautification exercise." This seems only hyperbole until you consider what is actually taking place at Kem-Pest and the other local Superfund site on South Kingshighway.

Our misgivings aren't with the sincerity of the EPA, only with the agency's ability to apply some degree of common sense and local concern to what is ultimately (and often brutally) a bureaucratic process. The fundamental paradox remains in place: if danger is imminent, why does the system take so long to act, and if it is not imminent, why is deliberation not given to all scientific viewpoints?

The EPA has at its heart a noble ambition: protecting the planet. However, in these times when taxpayers are demanding more accounta~bi~lity from their government, the notions of action when action is required and thorough research carry a certain nobility as well. As a society, we should feel better when the government moves to protect us. With the EPA, we are only disquieted.