The emphasis of the federal program may need to be shifted slightly to enable the cleanup of hundreds of thousands of "brownfield" sites. Those areas are not as dangerously polluted as full-fledged Superfund sites and until recently have been brushed aside by the EPA as not of federal interest. Few have been cleared of contamination.

U.S. Energy Secretary Bill Richardson joined Daley and ComEd CEO John Rowe to announce the plan to turn one of Chicago's many contaminated industrial "brownfields" into what Richardson called "brightfields" that help clean up the environment.

The new facility would be a brownfield expansion (addition to existing plant), producing about 1.2 million tons of iron.