Chris White, DCNF

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) ordered six companies to clean out several highly contaminated areas in an Indiana city with staggeringly high lead levels.

The EPA is requiring U.S.S. Lead, Atlantic Richfield, DuPont, Chemours, and other polluters to excavate contaminated soil in two areas of East Chicago with high levels of toxic soil. The companies will likely pay nearly $26 million to have the two cites decontaminated.

“We continue to make cleaning up East Chicago a priority, to protect the health and well-being of the residents who live in the impacted areas,” EPA chief Scott Pruitt in a press statement Monday. The agreement comes after Pruitt promised earlier this year that East Chicago’s Superfund Site would become a priority for the EPA.

Pruitt was specifically referring to a small community where officials last summer began evacuating citizens from the West Calumet Housing Complex after they found some yards with lead levels more than 70 times the federal safety standard. There are nearly 50 people remaining in the housing complex.

The city was affected by contamination from a closed lead production facility owned by the firm U.S. Steel – East Chicago was designated a Superfund cleanup site by the agency in 2009.

“Getting toxic land sites cleaned up and revitalized is of the utmost importance to the communities across the country that are affected by these sites,” said Pruitt, who is trying to transition the agency from fighting manmade global warming specifically to protecting public health.

“I have charged the Superfund Task Force to immediately and intently develop plans for each of these sites to ensure they are thoughtfully addressed with urgency,” he added.

Pruitt is trying to refashion the EPA, transitioning the agency from one that fights manmade global warming to one that protects human health and the environment.

Other areas in that region have also wrestled with stubbornly high lead levels. Flint citizens filed a lawsuit in January, for instance, claiming the agency failed to take the proper steps to ensure that state and local authorities were addressing last year’s water crisis. The defendants were seeking a civil action lawsuit for $722 million in damages.

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