As the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act nears its one-year anniversary, waste-cleanup firms anticipate another year of backlog boosts. But their peers in the water and wastewater infrastructure sector hope a U.S.-Canada agreement signed on Feb. 5 will ease “Buy American” tensions that have been dogging progress of their stimulus-funded work.
With a stable of contractors in place, entities with cleanup missions—such as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Superfund program and the U.S. Energy Dept.’s effort to shrink nuclear waste sites—touted stimulus progress last year. DOE sites across the U.S. have more than $6 billion in ARRA funds through 2011, with most funding obligated through existing contracts. At DOE’s Hanford, Wash., nuclear site, cleanup contractors have spent $273.9 million through last December, “a little under target,” says a site spokesman. But he says spending and project completion will meet targets by the end of fiscal 2011.