EPA Adds 5 and Proposes 5 Sites to Superfund's National Priorities List

Release date: 03/07/2007

Contact Information: Roxanne Smith, (202) 564-4355 / smith.roxanne@epa.gov

(Washington, D.C. - March 7, 2007) The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is adding five new hazardous waste sites that pose risks to human health and the environment to the National Priorities List 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. This brings the total number of sites (or final sites) on the cleanup list to 1,245. EPA is also proposing to add five other sites to the cleanup list.

Contaminants found at these final and proposed sites include arsenic, barium, benzene, butyltins, cadmium, cesium-137, chromium, cis-1,2-dichloroethene (cis-1,2-DCE), copper, dibenzofuran compounds, dioxin, lead, lindane, mercury, pentachlorophenol (PCP), polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), polyaromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), silver, tetrachloroethene (PCE), thorium-230, trichloroethene (TCE), zinc, and other metals.

With the proposal of the five new sites, there are 61 proposed sites awaiting final agency action: 56 in the general Superfund section and five in the federal facilities section. Altogether, there are 1,306 final and proposed sites. To date, there have been 1,562 sites listed on the NPL, with 317 of these sites deleted.

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. Public Health Service 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.