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EPA Adds One Hazardous Waste Site in the Southeast to Superfund’s National Priorities List

Release Date: 05/08/2014
Contact Information: James Pinkney, (404) 562-9183 (Direct), (404) 562-8400 (Main) [email protected]

ATLANTA – The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced today the addition of one new hazardous waste site in the southeast that pose risks to human health and the environment to the National Priorities List (NPL) of Superfund sites.

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

• Walker Machine Products, Inc. (former machine screw products manufacturer) in Collierville, Tenn.

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. Furthermore, the study found that, once a site has all cleanup remedies in place, surrounding properties have a significant increase in property values as compared to pre-NPL proposal values.

Since 1983, EPA has listed 1,701 sites on the NPL. At 1,158 or 68 percent of NPL sites, all cleanup remedies are in place. Approximately 662 or 39 percent of NPL sites have all necessary long-term protections in place, which means EPA considers the sites protective for redevelopment or reuse.

With all NPL sites, EPA first works to identify companies or people responsible for the contamination at a site, and requires them to conduct or pay for the cleanup. 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 EPA clean up funding is required for these sites.