Today (October 5, 2020), the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced that in Fiscal Year (FY) 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 EPA has deleted a historically high number of Superfund sites, sending a clear message that human health and the environment are protected and paving the way for redeveloping these properties into community assets.
The attention and focus the Trump Administration has put on the Superfund program is making a real difference in the lives of people living in communities near Superfund sites across the country,” said EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler. “Clean up and deletion from the NPL helps communities move forward, allowing land to be repurposed and reused in more productive ways. We’re proud of the progress we’ve made.”
EPA deletes sites or parts of sites from the NPL when no further cleanup is required to protect human health or the environment. Years, and sometimes decades, of complex investigation and cleanup work have gone into getting these sites to where they are today.
While EPA encourages site reuse throughout the cleanup 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. Over the past several years, the EPA has placed special emphasis on deleting sites and portions of sites to demonstrate to communities that cleanup is complete.
During the first term of the Trump Administration, EPA has deleted all or part of 82 sites from the NPL matching the site year total over two terms of the previous administration. In FY 2017, EPA doubled the number of full and partial sites deleted over the previous fiscal year with a total of six sites. In FY 2018, the Agency increased the total number of deletions to 22, and in FY 2019, increased it to 27. This past year, in FY 2020, EPA continued to achieve a historically high rate of deletions with 14 full sites and parts of 13 additional sites, for a total of 27 deletion activities.
In FY 2020, EPA employees initiated a project to evaluate and improve the deletion process and as a result consolidated the rulemaking process to streamline the administrative steps involved in deleting sites from the NPL. Going forward, this improvement is expected to reduce workloads, shorten process lead-times and lower program costs.
The 14 sites EPA fully deleted from the NPL are:
- FMC Corp. (Dublin Road Landfill), Town of Shelby, NY
- Hormigas Ground Water Plume, Caguas, PR
- First Piedmont Corp. Rock Quarry (Route 719), Pittsylvania County, VA
- Fairfax St. Wood Treaters, Jacksonville, FL
- Red Panther Chemical Company, Clarksdale, MS
- Dupage County Landfill/Blackwell Forest, Warrenville, IL
- Fridley Commons Park Well Field, Fridley, MN
- Scrap Processing Co., Inc., Medford, WI
- Cimarron Mining Corp., Carrizozo, NM
- Tulsa Fuel and Manufacturing, Collinsville, OK
- Annapolis Lead Mine, Annapolis, MO
- JASCO Chemical Corp., Mountain View, CA
- American Crossarm & Conduit Co., Chehalis, WA
- Northside Landfill, Spokane, WA
The 13 sites EPA partially deleted are:
- Industri-Plex, Woburn, MA
- Maccalloy Corp., Charleston, SC
- Redstone Arsenal U.S. Army/NASA, Huntsville, AL
- Allied Chemical & Ironton Coke, Ironton, Ohio
- Douglass Road/Uniroyal Inc., Landfill Mishawaka, IN
- Fort Wayne Reduction Dump, Fort Wayne, IN
- Southeast Rockford Ground Water Contamination, Rockford, IL
- U.S. Smelter and Lead Refinery, Inc., East Chicago, IN
- Omaha Lead, Omaha, NE
- Anaconda Co. Smelter, Anaconda, MT
- Idaho Pole, Co., Bozeman, MT
- Libby Asbestos Site, Libby, MT
- Queen City Farms, Maple Valley, WA
Additional information about EPA’s NPL deletions can be viewed at https://www.epa.gov/
The Superfund Task Force Accomplishments can be viewed at https://www.epa.gov/
To search for information about these and other NPL sites, please visit https://www.epa.gov/
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