Jan. 2 (UPI) — The Environmental Protection Agency fully or partly eliminated seven toxic cleanup sites from its Superfund list in 2017, the agency announced Tuesday.
EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt announced he removed three full sites and parts of four others from the National Priorities List. The agency removed two sites in 2016.
“We have made it a priority to get these sites cleaned up faster and in the right way,” he said. “By creating a streamlined task force and making major remedy decisions that hold potentially responsible parties accountable for clean up, the Superfund program is carrying out the Agency’s mission of protecting human health and the environment more every day.”
Among those completely removed were:
— Nutting Truck & Caster Co. in Faribault, Minn., which the EPA has investigated, cleaned up and monitored for nearly four decades over trichloroethylene contamination in groundwater.
— Shpack Landfill in Norton and Attleboro, Mass., where soil and groundwater were contaminated with radioactive material. The EPA made it a Superfund site in 1980.
— and the Perdido, Ala., ground water contamination site, where a train derailment in 1965 spilled benzene.
The partial deletions included:
— Mystery Bridge Road and U.S. Highway 20 in Wyoming, where groundwater was contaminated with benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene and total xylenes.
— Ellisville Site in Missouri, which contained drums full of hazardous materials.
— Omaha Lead in Nebraska, where soil was contaminated by deposits from lead smelting and refining operations.
— and the North Penn Area 6 in Pennsylvania, where volatile organic compounds contaminated soil and groundwater.
