Release Date: 05/31/2012
Contact Information: Roy Seneca seneca.roy@epa.gov (215) 814-5567

PHILADELPHIA – (May 31, 2012) --- The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has reached a settlement with Precision National Plating Services, Inc. on a plan to clean up groundwater and surface water contamination at a site in Clarks Summit, Pa. where the company had operated a chrome plating facility from 1958 to 1999.

EPA has been overseeing Precision’s cleanup activities at the site since 1991. The company was performing this cleanup work under a prior EPA order, which addressed soil contamination. This order has been replaced by the settlement agreement announced today, which also addresses groundwater and surface water contamination. Under the agreement, Precision will continue to implement the EPA-selected cleanup plan for the site. The plan includes using a process known as “in situ chemical remediation” that involves injecting a chemical reducing agent into the ground to treat groundwater that is contaminated with hexavalent chromium, a chemical compound that had been used at the facility. 

The final cleanup plan, expected to take several years, will also include extensive monitoring of groundwater wells on the site and around the perimeter of the site.

Located about 10 miles north of Scranton, the Precision National Plating Site, 198 Ackerly Road, Clarks Summit, Pa. includes 46 acres overall and about five acres that were used for site operations. The rest of the property is undeveloped and largely wooded. 

Precision used the site for a chromium electroplating facility for locomotive crankshafts. Under an April 1998 EPA Administrative Order, Precision performed an investigation of ground water impacts due to hexavalent chromium contamination, conducted an ecological risk assessment and installed collection and treatment systems at all chromium impacted seeps at the site. In a 2008 consent decree, Precision agreed to pay for EPA’s costs in overseeing the site cleanup.

For more information on the settlement and cleanup plans, visit www.epaosc.org/precision.