The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is added seven
hazardous waste sites to the National Priorities List (NPL) of Superfund sites.
They are:
- MacMillan Ring Free Oil (former oil refinery) – Norphlet, AK
- Keddy Mill (former sawmill, grist and wool carding mill) – Windham, ME
- PCE Southeast Contamination (ground water plume) – York, NE
- PCE/TCE Northeast Contamination (ground water plume) – York, NE
- Unimatic Manufacturing Corporation (former chemical
manufacturer) – Fairfield, NJ
- Wolff-Alport Chemical Company (former metal extraction facility) – Ridgewood,
NY
- Walker Machine Products, Inc. (former machine screw products
manufacturer) – Collierville, TN
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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. “Cleaning up
contaminated land is critical to the protection of human health and the
environment,” said Mathy Stanislaus, assistant administrator for EPA’s Office
of Solid Waste and Emergency Response. “Superfund cleanups also play an
important role in advancing the economic well-being of communities by turning
formerly idle properties into productive community assets that can broaden tax
bases, create jobs, enhance property values and support improved overall
well-being.”
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.
Superfund
actions frequently convert contaminated land into productive local resources
and increase local property values by eliminating or reducing real and
perceived health risks and environmental contamination associated with
hazardous waste sites. 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.
Read more at the EPA.
Keddy Mill image via Lakes Region Weekly.