The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced on October 5 that in fiscal year 2020 the agency deleted all or part of 27 sites from the Superfund National Priorities List (NPL).
This marks the third year in a row that the EPA has deleted a historically high number of Superfund sites. A total of 22 sites this year involved groundwater.
“Cleaning up these Superfund sites brings real environmental benefits to places that have suffered environmental degradation while also helping move them forward,” EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler said. “Once the land has been cleaned up of historical pollutants, the sites can be repurposed and reused in ways that create jobs and enhance the health of entire communities. We’re proud of the progress we’ve made, and there is still more work to do.”
The EPA and the states, through their designated state agencies, have determined that all appropriate response actions under CERCLA (Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act), other than operation and maintenance, monitoring, and five-year reviews, where applicable, have been completed. However, the deletions do not preclude future actions under Superfund.
While the EPA encourages site reuse throughout the clean-up process, deletions from the NPL can help revitalize communities and promote economic growth by signaling to potential developers and financial institutions that cleanup is complete.
Here are the sites that have been fully deleted from the list this year involving groundwater:
- FMC Corp. (Dublin Road Landfill), Town of Shelby, New York
- Hormigas Ground Water Plume, Caguas, Puerto Rico
- First Piedmont Corp. Rock Quarry (Route 719), Pittsylvania County, Virginia
- Red Panther Chemical Co., Clarksdale, Mississippi
- Dupage County Landfill/Blackwell Forest, Warrenville, Illinois
- Fridley Commons Park Well Field, Fridley, Minnesota
- Cimarron Mining Corp., Carrizozo, New Mexico
- Annapolis Lead Mine, Annapolis, Missouri
- JASCO Chemical Corp., Mountain View, California
- American Crossarm & Conduit Co., Chehalis, Washington
- Northside Landfill, Spokane, Washington.
These sites involving groundwater have been partially deleted from the list this year:
- Industri-Plex, Woburn, Massachusetts
- Maccalloy Corp., Charleston, South Carolina
- Redstone Arsenal U.S. Army/NASA, Huntsville, Alabama
- Allied Chemical & Ironton Coke, Ironton, Ohio
- Douglass Road/Uniroyal Inc., Landfill Mishawaka, Indiana
- Fort Wayne Reduction Dump, Fort Wayne, Indiana
- Southeast Rockford Ground Water Contamination, Rockford, Illinois
- U.S. Smelter and Lead Refinery Inc., East Chicago, Indiana
- Anaconda Co. Smelter, Anaconda, Montana
- Idaho Pole Co., Bozeman, Montana
- Queen City Farms, Maple Valley, Washington.