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EPA adds One and Proposes Five Sites in the Southeast to Superfund’s National Priorities List

Release Date: 03/8/2011
Contact Information: James Pinkney, (404) 562-9183, [email protected]

(ATLANTA – Mar. 8, 2011) The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has added one and proposed five new hazardous waste sites in the southeast that pose risks to human health and the environment to the National Priorities List (NPL) of Superfund sites. Superfund is the federal program that investigates and cleans up the most complex uncontrolled or abandoned hazardous waste sites in the country.

The following site in the Southeast has been added to the National Priorities List:

· Wright Chemical Corporation (former fertilizer manufacturer) in Riegelwood, NC.

The following 5 sites in the Southeast have been proposed to the National Priorities List:

· Kerr-McGee Chemical Corp – Columbus (former pressure –treated railroad products manufacturer) in Columbus, MS;
· Red Panther Chemical Company (former pesticides formulation plant) in Clarksdale, MS;
· CTS of Asheville, Inc. (former electronics components manufacturing facility) in Asheville, NC;
· US Finishing/Cone Mills (former textile operation) in Greenville, SC; and
· Alamo Contaminated Ground Water (contaminated ground water plume) in Alamo, TN.

To date, there have been 1,637 sites listed on the NPL. Of these sites, 347 sites have been deleted resulting in 1,290 sites currently on the NPL. With the proposal of the 5 new sites in the Southeast and 10 new sites across the country, there are 67 proposed sites awaiting final agency action: 62 in the general Superfund section and five in the federal facilities section. There are a total of 1,357 final and proposed sites.

Contaminants found at the sites include arsenic, asbestos, barium, cadmium, chromium, copper, creosote, dichloroethene (DCE), dioxins, lead, mercury, pentachlorophenol (PCP), polynuclear aromatic hydrcarbons (PAHs), polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), tetrachloroethene (PCE), trichloroethane (TCA), trichloroethene (TCE), and zinc.

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. Department of Health and Human Services 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: https://www.epa.gov/superfund/sites/npl/current.htm