When the United States Congress, working with President Obama’s administration, released the massive American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, the staggering billions it opened for allocation were in part to go to “shovel-ready” infrastructure projects. Whether the nation’s most polluted sites would benefit, however, was not clear.
On Wednesday, April 15, US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administrator Lisa P. Jackson announced $600 million of the Recovery Act funds would be made available to National Priorities List (NPL) projects—otherwise known as Superfund.
Superfund projects represent the most serious environmental problems, such as old mining sites with exposed toxic heaps or polluted landfill zones that were in operation and closed prior to today’s more stringent landfill construction and operation codes. Often, the work on these sites includes the establishment of modern containment controls, such as through the installation of geosynthetic caps.
A sample of the approximately 50 projects receiving new money:
- The notorious Summitville Mine cleanup project in Colorado will receive up to $25 million.
- The state of New Jersey will receive up to $100 million in new cleanup funds to tackle a host of NPL sites, including three sites receiving roughly $25 million each: the Cornell Dubilier Electronics site in South Plainfield, Roebling Steel site in Florence Township, and the Welsbach site in Camden and Gloucester City.
- Up to $5 million for road work at the Sulphur Bank mine site. A road entering the Elem Indian Colony of Pomo Indians in Lake County, California, which is on the heavily polluted site, was constructed in the 1970s with toxic mercury ash.
- Up to $15 million for two Superfund sites in the Long Island area of New York: Lawrence Aviation Industries (a former manufacturing site) and Old Roosevelt Field (a former military and commercial airfield). Both sites contain groundwater contamination from chlorinated solvents such as trichloroethylene and tetrachloroethylene.
- In the state of Washington, up to $10 million will be awarded to contaminated soil cleanup near the former Asarco smelter on Tacoma’s Commencement Bay. Also, another $5 million will go to cleanup work at the Wyckoff-Eagle Harbor site on Bainbridge Island.
For more information on the range of work and funding see the official EPA release.
Chris Kelsey is the editorial director for geosynthetica.net. He can be reached at chris@geosynthetica.net.
