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EPA Adds Six and Proposes 11 Sites to Superfund's National Priorities List

Release Date: 09/03/2008
Contact Information: Latisha Petteway, (202) 564-4355 / [email protected]

(Washington, D.C. - Sept. 3, 2008) The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is adding six new hazardous waste sites that pose risks to human health and the environment to the National Priorities List of Superfund sites. EPA is also proposing to add 11 other 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 date, there have been 1,587 sites listed on the NPL. Of these sites, 329 sites have been deleted, resulting in 1,258 sites currently on the NPL. With the proposal of the 11 new sites, there are 64 proposed sites awaiting final agency action: 58 in the general Superfund section and six in the federal facilities section. There are a total of 1,322 final and proposed sites.

Contaminants found at the final and proposed sites include arsenic, asbestos, cadmium, chromium, copper, cyanide, lead, mercury, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), selenium, silver, sulfuric acid, tetrachloroethene (PCE), trichloroethane (TCA), trichloroethene (TCE), vinyl chloride, and zinc.

In addition, EPA is withdrawing the proposal to add the Kennecott (South Zone) site in Copperton, Utah to the NPL because all cleanup projects have been completed and no further EPA actions are needed.

With all Superfund sites, EPA tries to identify and locate the parties potentially responsible for the contamination. 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 cleanup funding is required for these sites.

Sites may be placed on the list through various mechanisms:

• Numeric ranking established by EPA's Hazard Ranking System.
• Designation by states or territories of one top-priority site.
• Meeting all three of the following requirements:

• The Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) of the U.S. Public Health Service has issued a health advisory that recommends removing people from the site;
• EPA determines the site poses a significant threat to public health; and
• EPA anticipates it will be more cost-effective to use its remedial authority than to use its emergency removal authority to respond to the site.

For Federal Register notices and supporting documents for these final and proposed sites, visit: epa.gov/superfund/sites/npl/current.htm

The following six sites have been added to the National Priorities List:

Iron King Mine – Humboldt Smelter (Dewey-Humboldt, Ariz.)
Nelson Tunnel/Commodore Waste Rock (Creede, Colo.)
Flash Cleaners (Pompano Beach, Fla.)
Aberdeen Contaminated Ground Water (Aberdeen, N.C.)
East Troy Contaminated Aquifer (Troy, Ohio)
Old Esco Manufacturing (Greenville, Texas)

The following 11 sites have been proposed to the National Priorities List:

B. F. Goodrich (Rialto, Calif.)
Raleigh Street Dump (Tampa, Fla.)
Arkla Terra Property (Thonotosassa, Fla.)
U.S. Smelter and Lead Refinery, Inc. (East Chicago, Ind.)
Fort Detrick Area B Ground Water (Frederick, Md.)
Curtis Papers, Inc. (Milford, N.J.)
Behr Dayton Thermal System VOC Plume (Dayton, Ohio)
New Carlisle Landfill (New Carlisle, Ohio)
Borit Asbestos Tailings Pile (Ambler, Pa.)
Barite Hill/Nevada Goldfields (McCormick, S.C.)
U.S. Magnesium (Tooele County, Utah)