EPA awards $1 billion to clean up toxic waste sites
Projects to clean up 22 toxic waste sites across the country will receive $1 billion from the federal Superfund program to help clear a backlog of hazardous sites such as landfills, mines and manufacturing facilities, the Environmental Protection Agency said Friday.
One of the sites on the list is in Berks County.
The Ryeland Road Arsenic Superfund site in Heidelberg Township was once home to a paint and pesticide plant that burned down in 1940 and left the ground contaminated with arsenic and lead.
Cleanup of the nearly 7-acre site on the north and south sides of Ryeland Road began in 2006. The federal Environmental Protection Agency relocated residents of three homes, demolished vacated homes and removed about 140,000 tons of contaminated soil from the site. It also conducted innovative cleanup and restoration activities on the forested and wetland portion of the site.
In 2009, EPA vacuum dredged the spring-fed creek at the site to minimize the impact on the stream, woods and wetlands.
The EPA transferred ownership of the property to Heidelberg Township in October 2010 after the bulk of the work was completed. The township constructed a pole building, which a local youth sports league leases for equipment storage.
The agency continues to plant ferns that absorb arsenic to help reduce arsenic concentrations in soil and wetland sediment. It also continues to study groundwater at the site.
Township officials were unavailable for comment.
Other sites
The money is the second installment in $3.5 billion appropriated under the 2021 infrastructure law signed by President Joe Biden. Sites targeted for cleanup include a lead-contaminated neighborhood on Atlanta’s Westside and a former dry cleaning solvents distributor in Tampa, Fla.
Besides the Atlanta and Tampa projects, money also will go to a groundwater contamination site in Indianapolis, a former tannery in Danvers, Mass., and a former metal stamping and tool-and-die shop near St. Louis.
The money also will be used to speed cleanup of 100 ongoing Superfund projects across the United States, the EPA said. The agency has vowed to clear a longtime backlog in the Superfund program, which was established in 1980 to clean up sites contaminated with hazardous substances. The program has languished for years because of a lack of funding.
The EPA announced an initial $1 billion in funding from the infrastructure law in December 2021.
While the agency is moving faster to clean up contaminated sites in communities across the country, “our work is not yet finished,” EPA Administrator Michael Regan said in a statement Friday. “We’re continuing to build on this momentum to ensure that communities living near many of the most serious uncontrolled or abandoned releases of contamination finally get the investments and protections they deserve.”
Of the new cleanup sites announced on Friday, 60% are in low-income or minority communities that are chronically overpolluted, Regan said.
Thousands of contaminated sites exist across the country as a result of hazardous waste being dumped, often illegally, left out in the open, or otherwise improperly managed, including in manufacturing facilities, processing plants, landfills and mining sites.
Superfund cleanups help transform contaminated properties and create jobs in overburdened communities, while repurposing these sites for a wide range of uses, including public parks, retail businesses, office space, homes and solar power generation, EPA said.
In all, new projects in 14 states and Puerto Rico will receive funding, EPA said.
The Atlanta site
About $50 million will go to clean up lead contamination in a residential neighborhood in Atlanta. The Westside project has been waiting for years to access federal funds. Experts say it is unclear where the lead came from, but it is likely from metal foundries that were once common on Atlanta’s Westside.
The cleanup money “couldn’t come soon enough,” Sen. Raphael Warnock, D-Ga., said on a conference call Friday with Regan and other officials.