Fifty of the most polluted and hazardous U.S. waste sites have been selected by federal environmental officials to receive nearly $600 million in stimulus funding. The sites in 28 states were contaminated years ago by mining waste, lead smelters, and chemical releases. At half of the sites, cleanup stalled when the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) ran out of money. The $582 million announced Wednesday by the EPA will pay for projects like excavating contaminated soil from hundreds of residential lawns, removing toxic mud from the bottom of harbors, and connecting hundreds of homes to clean drinking water after their wells were poisoned in efforts to control insects in the 1930s and 1940s.
