U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Region 5 announced today that a contaminated aquifer in Milford, Ohio, is one of nine new hazardous waste sites proposed to be added to the Superfund section of the National Priorities List. Superfund is the federal program that investigates and cleans up the most complex, uncontrolled or abandoned hazardous waste sites in the country. There are a total of 1,343 final and proposed sites on the NPL at this time. In the case of the Milford site, the source of the contamination has not been tracked down despite years of effort.
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Region 5 announced today that a contaminated aquifer in Milford, Ohio, is one of nine new hazardous waste sites proposed to be added to the Superfund section of the National Priorities List. Superfund is the federal program that investigates and cleans up the most complex, uncontrolled or abandoned hazardous waste sites in the country. There are a total of 1,343 final and proposed sites on the NPL at this time. In the case of the Milford site, the source of the contamination has not been tracked down despite years of effort.
!ADVERTISEMENT!The Milford Contaminated Aquifer site is a ground water plume contaminated with chlorinated solvents in the vicinity of Main Street and Lila Avenue in Milford. Volatile organic compounds, or VOCs, were first detected in the Milford public wells in 1986. The Ohio Environmental Protection Agency began searching for the source of the contamination in 1991. Despite several investigations, the source was not found, and the state referred the site to EPA.
Milford’s well field serves 6,000 people. The city installed and maintains an air stripper to remove VOCs from its treated water.
EPA will try to identify and locate the parties potentially responsible for the Milford contamination. For sites without viable responsible parties, EPA investigates the full extent of the contamination before starting significant cleanup. It may be several years before major cleanup funding is required.
If the site is added to the NPL, EPA will be eligible for the technical and financial resources to fully characterize the extent of the contamination in the aquifer and develop a comprehensive cleanup plan.
The other proposed sites include:
Armstrong World Industries in Macon Georgia
Dwyer ground water plume in Elkton, Maryland
Washington County in Caledonia, Missouri
Horton Iron and Metal in Wilmington, North Carolina
Mansfield Trail Dump in Byram, New Jersey
Cabo Rojo ground water in Cabo Rojo Puerto Rico
Hormigas ground water in Caguas, Puerto Rico
West County ground water in Midland, Texas
As of January 2010 there were 1270 listed sites with another 340 sites that had been delisted. In 1989 there were 799 listed sites and 16 had been delisted. So the list is growing but the percentage of completion is growing too.
For further information: http://yosemite.epa.gov/opa/admpress.nsf/0/9B0497D027057A5C852577C100757EE8
