(AP) -- A judge has set deadlines for parts of the cleanup work at a closed coal-processing plant while he decides whether to punish the plant's owner for missing earlier deadlines.

Scioto County Common Pleas Judge Howard Harcha on Friday continued a hearing involving the Troy, Mich.-based New Boston Coke company until July 7.

He said the company must begin removing barrels and drums of chemicals from the plant by May 16. The contents of most of the 5,000 containers first need to be examined, and the judge said that must be completed by May 23.

Also by May 16, the company must report to the court the feasibility of transporting 450,000 gallons of wastewater to a nearby treatment facility. It also is required to identify potential disposal sites for other waste.

The Ohio Environmental Protection Agency is asking the judge to declare New Boston Coke in contempt of court.

The company was ordered in December to pay a $2.6 million fine and clean up the 86-year-old plant site in New Boston, along the Ohio River.

It said during a two-day hearing last week that it has been hindered by unrealistic deadlines and an uncooperative EPA.

A Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization also has made cleanup funds scarce, the company's attorney, Scott Seabolt, told the judge.

In 1999, the EPA issued a report documenting dangerously high levels of benzene emissions that pose a cancer risk to residents of the town 85 miles south of Columbus.

The plant closed last year.

"We're pleased with the direction the judge is moving in," said Mark Gribben, a spokesman for the Ohio attorney general's office. "He set some very firm deadlines."

Gribben said the judge instructed the company's attorney to ensure that the company's president, Fred Dery, attends the July 7 hearing.

Neither Dery nor any other company official was in court last week. When the judge questioned their absence, the company's attorney called in a consultant to answer questions.