Eight Other Sites Proposed To Be Added

WWH/CJE – The ‘Superfund is broke. If any area is cleaned (Making this list does not mean they will clean it.) the majority of cost is paid by taxpayers.

While presented and word-smithed to give the taxpayer the impression that these sites will be cleaned up and guilty Corporations will be made to pay for it. Very few sites get cleaned up at all.

The US government touts that many areas have already been cleaned up. Actually very few have. Tens of thousands of these toxic sites are never looked at.

The whole “Superfund” is a get out of jail free card for major corporations.

Before you read the propaganda the US government has released, read this one account

Grime pays

BY DAMIEN CAVE,Salon -

Patty Estrella drives her Chrysler Sebring convertible down a dirt road, pulls onto a small hill, turns the car around and throws it into park. On the right, small suburban houses litter the landscape; to the left lies the blue expanse of Buzzards Bay. And straight ahead sprawls the subject of our tour: the abandondoned Atlas Tack factory, a 24-acre, arsenic-laden site that’s dominated by empty brick buildings with broken windows, a smokestack and — lying a few yards from where Estrella and I sit — reed-filled marshland that leaches poison into the bay, its mud and its clams.

“You can’t see pollution,” Estrella says, running a hand through her frosted blond hair. “But you can see the beauty of the ocean and the tragedy of it being ruined.”

She points to a downed strip of fence that lies in the marsh, glistening like a silver bridge. “The fence has been down for a while,” she says. Later in the day, I see a group of kids playing nearby; Estrella’s teenage son tells me that sneaking into the site has become a Fairhaven rite of passage.

It doesn’t look as though it would take much to get in. Getting the factories and poisons out, however, is another story — as Estrella knows. She has been fighting for an immediate cleanup of the area ever since the mid-’80s, when Atlas Tack abandoned the site, and when she and her husband bought the tiny ranch house that abuts what state, federal and independent studies have found to be contaminated property. She’s complained at community meetings, formed neighborhood watchdog groups, spied on the company from her attic window. Her closets overflow with Atlas Tack-related documents.

For a while, particularly during the late ’90s, it looked as though Estrella’s efforts were not in vain. State officials had already cleaned up a contaminated lagoon in the late ’80s and in 1999, after the city sued, Atlas Tack demolished one of the site’s more dangerous buildings. One year later, the EPA offered an $18 million cleanup plan. Read more…

Superfund is the common name for the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act of 1980 (CERCLA), a United States federal law designed to clean up sites contaminated withhazardous substances.^[1] Superfund created the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry(ATSDR), and it provides broad federal authority to clean up releases or threatened releases of hazardous substances that may endanger public health or the environment. The law authorized the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to identify parties responsible for contamination of sites and compel the parties to clean up the sites. Where responsible parties cannot be found, the Agency is authorized to clean up sites itself, using a special trust fund.

The list is ONLY a list. Not an order to clean anything.
WASHINGTON - The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is adding 12 new hazardous waste sites that pose public health and environmental risks to the National Priorities List (NPL) for cleanup under the Superfund program. EPA is also proposing to add another eight sites to the list.

Superfund is the federal program that investigates and cleans up the most complex, uncontrolled or abandoned hazardous waste sites in the country. For each of the 20 sites announced today, EPA has received letters of concurrence from state officials supporting the NPL listing.

“Cleaning up contamination is vitally important to the health of America’s communities,” said Mathy Stanislaus, assistant administrator for EPA’s Office of Solid Waste and Emergency Response. “Putting clean land back into productive use leads to increases in property values, generates new jobs and creates a stronger local economy that will strengthen these communities for years to come.”

Since 1983, 1,676 sites have been listed on the NPL. Of these sites, 360 sites have been cleaned up resulting in 1,316 sites currently on the NPL (including the 12 sites added today). There are 54 proposed sites (including the eight announced today) awaiting final agency action.

Contaminants found at the sites include acetone, arsenic, benzene, cadmium, chromium, copper, dichloroethene (DCE), hexavalent chromium, lead, mercury, methyl ethyl ketone (MEK), polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), tetrachloroethylene (PCE), pentachlorophenol (PCP), trichloroethane (TCA), trichloroethylene (TCE), xylene and zinc.

With all NPL sites, EPA 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.

The following 12 sites have been added to the National Priorities List:

•    Alabama Plating Company, Inc. (former electroplater) in Vincent, Ala.
•    Cedar Chemical Corporation (former chemical manufacturer) in West Helena, Ark.
•    Fairfax St. Wood Treaters (former wood treating operation) in Jacksonville, Fla.
•    Bautsch-Gray Mine (former lead and zinc mine) in Galena, Ill.
•    EVR-Wood Treating/Evangeline Refining Company (former wood treating operation) in Jennings, La.
•    Leeds Metal (abandoned scrap metal facility) in Leeds, Maine
•    Holcomb Creosote Co (former wood treating operation) in Yadkinville, N.C.
•    Orange Valley Regional Ground Water Contamination (contaminated ground water plume) in Orange/West Orange, N.J.
•    Peters Cartridge Factory (former ammunition manufacturer) in Kings Mills, Ohio
•    West Troy Contaminated Aquifer (contaminated ground water plume) in Troy, Ohio
•    Circle Court Ground Water Plume (contaminated ground water plume) in Willow Park, Texas
•    U.S. Oil Recovery (former used oil recovery operation) in Pasadena, Texas

The following eight sites have been proposed for addition to the National Priorities List:

•    Pike and Mulberry Streets PCE Plume (former dry cleaner) in Martinsville, Ind.
•    Former United Zinc & Associated Smelters (former zinc smelter) in Iola, Kan.
•    Creese & Cook Tannery (former tannery and finishing facility) in Danvers, Mass.
•    Walton & Lonsbury Inc. (former chrome plating operation) in Attelboro, Mass.
•    Matlack, Inc. (former chemical transportation business) in Woolwich Township, N.J.
•    Riverside Industrial Park (former paint manufacturer) in Newark, N.J.
•    Clinch River Corporation (former pulp and paper mill) in Harriman, Tenn.
•    700 South 1600 East PCE Plume (ground water plume) in Salt Lake City, Utah

EPA is also withdrawing its earlier proposal to add the Evergreen Manor Ground Water Contamination site in Winnebago County, Illinois to the NPL because remedial action has been completed. Affected residences have been connected to the public water supply, a county ordinance is in place which restricts the installation of private wells in the affected area, and contaminants of concern have remained below cleanup standards since 2006.

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