-Caveat Lector-
EPA adds 10 sites to Superfund list
Six are in New England; 10 more sites could be added
ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON, June 14 - One is a creek contaminated with PCBs in
Darby Township, Pa., flowing into the John Heinz National
Wildlife Refuge where federal officials caution people against
eating the fish. Another is a 150-acre former hazardous waste
storage site in Texas City, Texas, leaking chromium and lead
into 600-mile Galveston Bay - seventh-largest estuary in the
nation and major commercial and recreation fishery.
Only 15 percent of the nation's Superfund sites have been
cleaned and removed from the list since it was created two
decades ago.
THEN THERE is the abandoned copper mine in Strafford,
Vt., closed in 1958, but still pumping metals and sulfides
into the Copperas Brook and West Branch of the Ompompanoosuc
River.
They are among 10 new sites - six in New England -
being added Thursday to the Environmental Protection Agency's
Superfund list of most hazardous toxic waste sites in the
nation.
The EPA, spending as much as $1.5 billion a year for
Superfund cleanups, also proposes adding another 10 sites to
the list. The public has 60 days to comment on those.
HUNDREDS OF SITES
With these latest actions, announced in the Federal
Register, the EPA's Superfund program has 1,236 sites and 67
proposed for agency action. The combined 1,303 includes 166
federal facilities.
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The other new sites include four acres with recycled
oil company drums at Cooper Drum Company in South Gate,
Calif., and an intersection where groundwater is contaminated
with perchloroethylene (PCE) in Las Cruces, New Mexico.
There are two New York sites, an inactive junkyard in
Newburgh and 60 homes with PCE-contaminated wells along
Shenandoah Road in East Fishkill.
In Sheridan, Ore., soil laced with hazardous chemicals
from pressure-treated wood and preservatives has been found up
to a half-mile away from a lumber plant.
There also are two plants in Massachusetts, where groundwater
at a 46-acre plant in Concord once run by Nuclear Metals,
Inc., contains uranium and thorium and a former 50-acre
landfill known as the Sutton Brook Disposal Area in Tewksbury
has buried drums and contaminated groundwater.
Only about 15 percent of the nation's Superfund sites
have been cleaned and removed from the list since it was
created two decades ago.
BILL TO ADJUST SUPERFUND
The Superfund program's aim is to try to force
polluters to pay to clean up toxic sites they either created
or made worse, but critics say Superfund often relies on
litigation to recover cleanup costs. And that, say industry
representatives, often means ensnaring innocent business
owners.
Last month, the House passed a bill to protect small
businesses from big polluters trying to make them share
Superfund costs. EPA Administrator Christie Whitman said the
Bush administration supports the bill, since multiplying
lawsuits have diverted resources from cleanup.
"The less litigation we have, the more likely we finish
the job of cleaning up Superfund sites," Whitman said.
The EPA puts sites on the list based on its studies of
the risks to human health and the environment from
uncontrolled hazardous substances in ground and surface water,
soil and air. States also have a say in deciding priorities.
In December, the Superfund program turned 20 years old.
Congress passed the legislation in 1980 in the wake of the
Love Canal toxic waste crisis. The Niagara Falls, N.Y.,
neighborhood had been built on and around a former chemical
dump, and by the 1960s and '70s contaminated groundwater was
leaching into back yards and school grounds.
Love Canal has since become a Superfund success, with
the cleanup making habitable the outer rim of the contaminated
area and more than 200 homes there have been built or
renovated.
The EPA is proposing 10 new Superfund sites in
Casmalia, Calif.; LaSalle, Ill.; Louisville, Miss.; Central
Islip, N.Y.; Hazle Township and West Hazleton, Pa.; Richland
Township, Pa.; Deer Park, Texas; San Antonio, Texas; Eureka,
Utah; and Vershire, Vt.
MSNBC environment coverage
© 2001 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This
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