PCB cleanup at the Lemon Lane site in Bloomington.
(Courtesy photo)
Three Monroe County toxic waste sites could soon come off the EPA’s list of the nation’s most dangerous contamination locations.
The EPA has announced its intention to remove Bennett’s Dump, Lemon Lane Landfill and Neal’s Landfill from the Superfund National Priorities List. The locations are commonly called Superfund sites.
All three sites were contaminated by PCBs, which were used by Westinghouse in the 1950s when the company manufactured electrical equipment in Monroe County. PCBs were in oil used as insulation in electrical devices called capacitors. The compound has been linked with causing cancer and was banned from use in 1977.
Dumped and broken capacitors were found in the sites and the oils containing PCBs contaminated the soil. Water escaping the site threatened streams, which prompted construction of a water treatment plant as one of the cleanup remedies.
The EPA published a Notice of Intent for Deletion in the Federal Register May 13. The agency has been overseeing the cleanup of the sites since local, state and federal governmental agencies came to an agreement for how Westinghouse as the responsible party would clean them up.
EPA officials said delisting the sites means they believe the sites have been sufficiently cleaned and equipment and processes are in place to keep them that way. They say the action does not change the obligations of the party responsible for the pollution to maintain the safety of the sites. CBS/Viacom bought what once was Westinghouse and now is considered the responsible party.
The EPA will take comments on the plan to delist the sites until June 12.
Tom Alcamo, EPA’s remedial project manager for the Bloomington area cleanup for more than three decades, said delisting does not mean the EPA will stop monitoring the sites.
“CBS has implemented all the work that they agreed to,” he told WFIU in a 2019 interview. “That doesn’t mean that when you delist the site … that it’s a walkaway. They still have all the legal requirements and we have the ability to reopen the remedies. It just means the company has met all the requirements of the construction and they’re doing operation and maintenance in accordance with the plan.”
Delisting, Alcamo said, “is just a way that shows progress to the rest of the country that these sites have been addressed. But we’re in the operation and maintenance phase of the project and I would expect the water treatment plants to operate for many, many, many years.”
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