"Shovel-Ready" FUDS Cleanups Seen as Economic Stimulus

QUESTION (9:08): What can the Obama administration do to clean up contamination at Formerly Used Defense Sites, such as Spring Valley, where the cleanup of chemical munitions and weapons of mass destruction is now in its 16th year? At current funding levels of $250 million for more than 9,000 FUDS nationwide, it will take 80 - 160 years to clean up known contamination.

NORTON (15:16): It does seem to me that is quintessentially how this [stimulus] money would be used. If you put money into cleaning up sites like this ... you do what you’re going to have to do anyway and you do it by putting people to work. You put them to work in the short term, since that’s just the kind of work that is already out there "to be done" with not enough people doing it.
Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton
WAMU-BBC live simulcast from
American University (1/10/2009)