WASHINGTON, DC – U.S. Senator Pat Roberts today applauded Vice President Joe Biden for immediately addressing his concerns that taxpayer stimulus dollars were to be wasted on paving a road twice in Cherokee County, Kansas, but he urged the Vice President to continue his leadership to prevent further wasteful spending and provide for the buyout and the safety of residents of the town of Treece, Kansas.

"I give the White House and the Vice President special credit for acting so quickly on such an obvious problem," Roberts said. "However, The EPA still wants to spend $25 million in stimulus dollars to clean-up topsoil in an area that threatens to fall into sink holes. The EPA says the work will be finished in 10 years. Well, that is too long for residents to wait while living in contamination, and with the threat of cave-ins. We need to move them out of harm’s way immediately and stop spending money on work that will fall in a hole, literally."

The following are Senator Roberts’ remarks on the Senate floor:

"I’ve got some good news – and some bad news to report.

"First, the good news. In the last 24 hours, we have been able to reverse a policy that would have used stimulus money to pave the same road TWICE within a matter of months.

"I said yesterday that did NOT pass the Kansas common sense test – and was a huge abuse of taxpayer dollars.

"We reversed this silly plan in a bipartisan way. I want to personally thank Vice President Biden – the man charged with overseeing all the stimulus spending – with taking action to correct this abuse after I contacted him.

"The Vice President will be in Kansas today and I asked him to review this ridiculous example of wasteful spending occurring in Cherokee County, Kansas...just a short two hour drive south on U.S. 69 highway from where he’ll be.

"You see, a section of old highway 96 would have been resurfaced, with stimulus funds, then portions of an EPA Superfund site would have been cleaned up, with stimulus funds, and the heavy equipment used for the clean-up would have damaged the newly resurfaced highway.

"Thus, once clean-up was complete, additional stimulus funds would have gone to repair road damage caused by the heavy trucks.

"Mr. President, taxpayers would have paid almost a million dollars to fix this road twice!

"Fortunately, in working with the Vice President, the media reports that the Superfund clean-up will now occur prior to any road work.

"That’s the good news. Now for the bad news.

"While this spending issue has been fixed, there is a much larger spending issue, affecting dozens of Kansas families in news:Cherokee County, that is still a major problem...and I urge Vice President to AGAIN provide leadership on this.

"In April, EPA Region 7 issued a press release saying Cherokee County would receive up to $25 million from the stimulus. According to the press release, ‘By starting or speeding up cleanup at Superfund sites, [stimulus] funding is also increasing the speed with which these sites are returned to productive use. When a Superfund site is redeveloped, it can offer significant economic benefits to local communities including future job creation.’

"Unfortunately, for fewer than 100 residents living in the city of Treece, the stimulus funding for this project is literally going down a sinking hole.

"The City of Treece, Kansas sits on the Kansas-Oklahoma border.

"This small, rural community was once a world leader in lead and zinc mining...mining that lasted for nearly one hundred years.

"As the mining companies shut down in the 1970's, the groundwater began to rise and the pillars that supported the soil above the mine shafts began to collapse.

"Shortly thereafter, in 1983 to be exact, the EPA placed over 500 square miles in southeast Kansas, northeast Oklahoma, and southwest Missouri on the National Priorities List of the Superfund list, including the city of Treece.

"In total, Cherokee County, Kansas, where Treece is located, has 115 square miles in the Superfund program.

"Last summer, during a listening tour of this part of Kansas, I saw first hand how 100 men, women and children are living in absolute blight. They live day by day not knowing when, and I do mean when, not if, their home will collapse into the earth below.

"They remain there – despite the loss of businesses and infrastructure – because their homes have no market value and they cannot sell them to fund a new home...or even rent one.

"As parts of Cherokee County have been on the Superfund list for the last 26 years, the EPA has removed and replaced contaminated top soil.

"And according to their stimulus press release, the EPA will continue to remove lead-contaminated residential soil at more than 380 acres in Baxter Springs and Treece.

"Now this probably sounds like an admirable thing to do, but as the ground below caves in, it exposes soil that has not been cleaned up so essentially this is a never ending process.

"I have worked long and hard to determine how best to address this situation, and the only satisfactory answer anyone has been able to give me is to relocate the town to protect the residents from a complete cave in.

"The federal government needs to buyout the land from the remaining home and business owners and then prohibit any future construction on property affected by contamination.

"This is exactly what we did with Picher, Oklahoma, on the other side of the state line, just a few years ago.

"Most estimates indicate that we could relocate the entire town with $3 million in federal funding and $500,000 in state funding...funding the state of Kansas has already set aside.

"During the previous Congress I introduced legislation to address the federal portion of this funding.

"Fast forward to today, with an economy experiencing some turbulence, and a so called ‘stimulus’ bill that everyone in this body heard was an absolute necessity and not only a job maintainer but a job creator...I asked EPA to use $3 million of already allocated stimulus funding to relocate the community – $3 million! I was told no.

"But wait, it becomes even more egregious.

"Instead of solving this problem and relocating the families of Treece to a safe community, the EPA, over the next few months with assistance of the stimulus package, intends to continue to spend even more money – $25 million – eight times the amount needed to relocate the community – to put new soil onto contaminated soil...which will then collapse and recontaminate all the soil.

"I have had an ongoing dialog with EPA and in a recent response to a letter I sent, they told me, ‘The [mine] wastes are causing great environmental harm to southeast Kansas as evidence by the documented impacts to birds, fish, mussels, macro-invertebrates, and horses. There is also evidence of harm to humans as it related to elevated blood lead levels.’

"The letter goes on to say, ‘EPA Region 7 believes the situation at the adjacent EPA Region 6 Tar Creek Superfund site in Oklahoma materially differs from the Cherokee County Superfund site, and that is what drives different cleanup decisions for the Tar Creek Site.’

"‘EPA Region 7 does not have factual basis that would allow the use of regular or [stimulus] funds for a residential buy-out at the Treece subsite.’

"Here’s my question: EPA acknowledged there is evidence of harm to humans, why not provide assistance to relocate fewer than 100 people from harms way?

"Furthermore, EPA told me ‘a ten-year time frame is estimated for complete waste remediation.’ Due to the continual mine collapses, I wonder if environmental clean up will ever be completed.

"Mr. President, I think it is in the best interests of all taxpayers to quit throwing money down sinkholes and provide an opportunity for 100 folks who have no other options to move as their homes are worth nothing.

"Mr. President, we don’t need to spend $25 million on a problem that won’t be solved. We need to take care of these people and spend $3 million to let them get on with their lives.

"While American taxpayers are spending untold millions to prevent mortgage collapses, I can see no better use for this stimulus than to get the residents of Treece into safe homes.

"This is an awful way to treat any community, it is a terrible use of taxpayer money, and it does not pass the Kansas common sense smell test.

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