PUEBLO – As hundreds of thousands of federal workers are furloughed or are working without pay, the Environmental Protection Agency is moving forward with it’s cleanup of an old smelter site in Pueblo.

Money was allocated for the work back in August, $75-million dollars to ensure that the process moved forward, and quickly. The goal is to clean up more than 900 homes in neighborhoods that have tested positive for levels of lead and arsenic.

While cleanup continues, testing is also moving forward at homes, sampling soil in yards and foundations and inside the homes for possibly contaminated dust. That new round of testing should kick off very soon. The targeted indoor cleanup will begin on February 18th. The soil cleanup begins on March 4th.