WASHINGTON - The U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA) is adding nine hazardous waste sites that pose
risks to people’s health and the environment to the National Priorities
List (NPL) of Superfund sites. EPA is also proposing
to add another eight sites to the list. Superfund is the federal
program that investigates and cleans up the most complex, uncontrolled
or abandoned hazardous waste sites in the country to protect people’s
health and the environment.
“Superfund cleanups protect the health of nearby communities and
ecosystems from harmful contaminants,” said Mathy Stanislaus, assistant
administrator for EPA’s Office of Solid Waste and Emergency Response.
“They can also provide positive economic outcomes
for communities including job creation, increased property values,
enhanced local tax bases and improved quality of life.”
The Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act
(CERCLA), the law establishing the Superfund program, requires EPA to
update the NPL at least annually and clean up hazardous waste sites to
protect human health with the goal of returning
them to communities for productive use. A site’s listing neither
imposes a financial obligation on EPA nor assigns liability to any
party. Updates to the NPL do, however, provide policymakers with a list
of high priority sites, serving to identify the size
and nature of the nation’s cleanup challenges.
The Superfund program has provided important benefits for people and the
environment since Congress established the program in 1980.Those
benefits are both direct and indirect, and include reduction of threats
to human health and ecological systems in the vicinity
of Superfund sites, improvement of the economic conditions and quality
of life in communities affected by hazardous waste sites, prevention of
future releases of hazardous substances, and advances in science and
technology.
By eliminating or reducing real and perceived health risks and
environmental contamination associated with hazardous waste sites,
Superfund actions frequently convert contaminated land into productive
local resources and increase local property values. A study
conducted by researchers at Duke and Pittsburgh Universities concluded
that, while a site’s proposal to the NPL reduces property values
slightly, making a site final on the NPL begins to increase property
values surrounding Superfund sites. Furthermore, the
study found that, once a site has all cleanup remedies in place,
surrounding properties have a significant increase in property values as
compared to pre-NPL proposal values.
Since 1983, EPA has listed 1,694 sites on the NPL. At 1,147 or 68
percent of NPL sites, all cleanup remedies are in place. Approximately
645 or 38 percent of NPL sites have all necessary long-term protections
in place, which means EPA considers the sites protective
for redevelopment or reuse.
With all NPL sites, EPA first works to identify companies or people
responsible for the contamination at a site, and requires them to
conduct or pay for the cleanup. For the newly listed sites without
viable potentially responsible parties, EPA will investigate
the full extent of the contamination before starting significant
cleanup at the site. Therefore, it may be several years before
significant EPA clean up funding is required for these sites.
The following nine sites have been added to the NPL:
• Beck’s Lake (former automotive and hazardous waste dump) in South Bend, Ind.;
• Garden City Ground Water Plume (ground water plume) in Garden City, Ind.;
• Keystone Corridor Ground Water Contamination (ground water plume) in Indianapolis, Ind;
• Cristex Drum (former fabric mill) in Oxford, N.C.;
• Hemphill Road TCE (former chemical drum recycling) in Gastonia, N.C.;
• Collins & Aikman Plant (Former) (former automotive rubber manufacturer) in Farmington, N.H.;
• Jackpile-Paguate Uranium Mine (former uranium mine) in Laguna Pueblo, N.M.;
• Wilcox Oil Company (former oil refinery) in Bristow, Okla.; and
• Makah Reservation Warmhouse Beach Dump (municipal and hazardous waste dump) in Neah Bay, Wash.
The following eight sites have been proposed for addition to the NPL:
• Macmillan Ring Free Oil (former oil refinery) in Norphlet, Ark.;
• Keddy Mill (former sawmill, grist and wool carding mill) in Windham, Maine;
• PCE Southeast Contamination (ground water plume) in York, Neb.;
• PCE/TCE Northeast Contamination (ground water plume) in York, Neb.;
• Troy Chem Corp Inc (chemical manufacturer) in Newark, N.J.;
• Unimatic Manufacturing Corporation (former chemical manufacturer) in Fairfield, N.J.;
• Wolff-Alport Chemical Company (former metal extraction facility) in Ridgewood, N.Y.; and
• Walker Machine Products, Inc. (former machine screw products manufacturer) in Collierville, Tenn.
In the proposed rule, EPA is also soliciting additional comments on
the Smurfit-Stone Mill site based on additional references to the Hazard
Ranking System documentation record being made available to the public
for review.
EPA is also changing the name of the B.F. Goodrich site in Rialto,
Calif., which EPA added to the NPL on September 23, 2009 (74 FR 48412).
The site’s new name, Rockets, Fireworks, and Flares (RFF), informs the
public of activities that are believed to have
contributed to contamination at the site.
Federal Register notices and supporting documents for the final and proposed sites:
http://www.epa.gov/superfund/sites/npl/current.htm
Information about how a site is listed on the NPL:
http://www.epa.gov/superfund/sites/npl/npl_hrs.htm
Superfund sites in local communities:
http://www.epa.gov/superfund/sites/index.htm
More information about the Comprehensive Environmental Response,
Compensation and Liability Act (CERCLA), the law establishing the
Superfund program, can be found at:
http://epa.gov/superfund/policy/cercla.htm
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