by Brianna Crandall — October 4, 2010—The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is adding seven new hazardous waste sites 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 seven sites were added to the National Priorities List:
- Black River PCBs, Jefferson County, NY
- Newtown Creek, Brooklyn/Queens, NY
- General Dynamics Longwood, Longwood, FL
- Sanford Dry Cleaners, Sanford, FL
- Smokey Mountain Smelters, Knox County, TN
- Ten Mile Drain, St. Clair Shores, MI
- Vienna Wells, Vienna, MO
- Newtown Creek, Brooklyn/Queens, NY
Contaminants found at the sites include arsenic, asbestos, barium, cadmium, chromium, copper, dichloroethene (DCE), lead, mercury, polynuclear aromatic hydrcarbons (PAHs), polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), tetrachloroethene (PCE), trichloroethane (TCA), trichloroethene (TCE), vinyl chloride and zinc.
To date, there have been 1,627 sites listed on the NPL. Of these sites, 345 sites have been deleted resulting in 1,282 sites currently on the NPL (including the seven new sites added in this rulemaking). There are 61 proposed sites awaiting final agency action: 56 in the general Superfund section and five in the federal facilities section. There are a total of 1,343 final and proposed sites.
