The Environmental Protection Agency isn't sure how President Clinton's economic stimulus package will affect its Superfund branch and cleanups at various sites, including the former Avtex Fibers plant in Front Royal, agency officials said Thursday.

Clinton's plan will provide an additional $23 million to the EPA's budget for the rest of fiscal 1993, which ends on Sept. 30.

In his address to Congress on Wednesday night, Clinton said federal money is better spent cleaning up the environment than paying lawyers.

Funding for the 13-year-old Superfund program will drop $118 million over the next four years, the agency said.

Reductions will be made by tightening controls on government contractors and streamlining processes, such as performing one comprehensive investigation of a site rather than several and taking more removal actions to address immediate risks, EPA officials said.

Some of the measures are already being taken, officials said. The remedial investigation for the Avtex site is nearing completion and will address all of the different areas of concern at the plant, including the Shenandoah River.

Agency officials have said the investigation and study on cleaning up the problem spots found in the investigation will cost about $5 million. About $17 million has already been spent at the former rayon plant.

Clinton's new EPA administrator, Carol Browner, was at the headquarters of the agency's mid-Atlantic region in Philadelphia Thursday and will spend additional time there today. She couldn't be reached by telephone Thursday.

Ms. Browner spoke to agency employees about the Clinton program, EPA spokesman Janet Viniski said.

Tenth District Rep. Frank R. Wolf told EPA officials on Wednesday that residents of Front Royal are concerned that the cleanup of the Avtex site is taking so long and they are confused that no activity is happening at the site, his spokesman, Nancy Suzich, said Thursday.

She said Wolf asked the agency to write a letter outlining "everything there is to know about the site" and the time frame for the cleanup.

Ms. Suzich said the letter should be available in a few weeks.

The plant closed in November 1989. The EPA had an emergency removal team on the scene for about two years. But since April, when a structurally unsound part of the huge plant was torn down, little has been done.