WASHINGTON - Today the E.P.A. (EPA) is adding 9 hazardous waste sites that pose risks to people's health and the environment to the National Priorities List (NPL) of Superfund sites. E.P.A. is also proposing to add another 8 sites to the list. Superfund is the federal plan 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 E.P.A. 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 E.P.A. 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 plan has provided important benefits for people and the environment since Congress established the plan 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 delivers 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 suggestion to the NPL reduces property values slightly, making a location final on the NPL begins to increase property values surrounding Superfund sites. Furthermore, the study found that, once a location has all cleanup remedies in place, surrounding properties have a significant increase in property values as compared to pre-NPL suggestion values.
Since 1983, E.P.A. 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 E.P.A. considers the sites protective for redevelopment or reuse.
With all NPL sites, E.P.A. 1st 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, E.P.A. will investigate the full extent of the contamination before starting significant cleanup at the site. Therefore, it may be several years before significant E.P.A. clean up backing is required for these sites.
The following 9 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 8 sites have been suggested 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, Incorporated (former machine screw products manufacturer) in Collierville, Tenn.
In the suggested rule, E.P.A. is also soliciting additional comments on the Smurfit-Stone Mill location based on additional references to the Hazard Ranking System documentation record being made accessible to the public for review.
E.P.A. is also changing the name of the B.F. Goodrich location in Rialto, Calif., which E.P.A. 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 suggested sites: http://www.epa.gov/superfund/sites/npl/current.htm
Information about how a location 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
