EPA RCRA ID: CTD001166008
The Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) is the public law that creates the framework for the proper management of hazardous and non-hazardous solid waste. Corrective action is a requirement under RCRA that facilities that treat, store or dispose of hazardous wastes, or did so in the past, investigate and clean up hazardous releases into soil, groundwater, surface water and air. For more information, and for more information on RCRA-specific terms used on this page, please visit EPA’s umbrella RCRA web page or EPA’s RCRA Corrective Action page.
On this page:
- Cleanup Activities
- Facility Description
- Institutional/Engineering Controls
- Enforcement and Compliance
- Related Information and Publicly Available Electronic Records
- Contacts for this Facility
Cleanup Activities
Harper Leader excavated and disposed of certain contaminated soils prior to bankruptcy. Following the closing of the business and the ceasing of operations in 1988, the EPA Superfund Removals Program mobilized to the site to perform additional cleanup actions. These included the excavation and disposal of additional surficial soils and waste sludges, and the removal of hazardous wastes left in drums on site. A cap was constructed over the former surface impoundment to minimize exposure risk. All buildings associated with the property's historic industrial operations have been demolished.
Cleanup Actions or environmental indicators characterizing the entire facility are shown below. This listing, and all the data on this page, come from EPA’s RCRAInfo and are refreshed nightly to this page. For this table, a blank in the Status column could mean the action either has not occurred or has not been reported in RCRAInfo.
Cleanup Activities Pertaining to the Entire Facility
For definitions of the terms used, hover over or click on the term.
Facility Description
The Waterbury Battery Company operated on this property from approximately 1906 to 1949, manufacturing copper oxide-zinc batteries and lead-acid batteries. Later, Harper Leader, Inc. operated a metal plating and finishing facility on this property from 1953 until 1988, when the company declared bankruptcy and went out of business. Precious metals plated included gold, silver, platinum, and rhodium. Other plating operations at the site involved copper, nickel, tin, lead, cadmium, and indium. Harper Leader also performed stripping, chromating, electropolishing, burnishing, cleaning, tumbling, and descaling. Precious metal reclaiming included silver plating, scraping, and melting to form ingots, and gold dissolution and reprecipitation. Wastes generated at the site included acids, bases, spent solvents, waste oil, ion-exchange resins, metal solutions, and metal hydroxide sludge, all of which were partially managed in an on-site surface impoundment.
https://epa.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=dc9f5dc8d99c42dd9cc1a7514c24e420&extent=-8130822.636%2C5092377.5533%2C-8130058.2658%2C5092654.9361%2C102100
Link to a larger, interactive view of the map.
This approximately 2 acre facility is located in an industrial area of Waterbury, CT. According to the US Geological Survey's National Hydrography Dataset, this facility is located in the Outlet Naugatuck River watershed and the nearest fresh surface water body is located on or immediately adjacent to the property. Geology in this area has been observed to be dominated by schist and gneiss formations.
Institutional and Engineering Controls at this Facility
Institutional and Engineering Controls help ensure human exposure and groundwater migration are under control at a cleanup facility. Where control types have been reported by states and EPA in EPA’s RCRAInfo, they are shown below. Not all control types are needed at all facilities, and some facilities do not require any controls. Where there are blanks, the control types may not be needed, may not be in place, or may not be reported in RCRAInfo.
Are Controls in Place at this Facility?
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Control(s) Type |
Control(s) in Place? |
Areas Subject to Control(s) |
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|---|---|---|---|
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(CA 772) |
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Enforcement and Permit Tools |
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Proprietary Controls Proprietary Controls (PR) |
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(CA 770) |
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For definitions of the terms used, hover over or click on the term.
Enforcement and Compliance at this Facility
EPA’s Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance (OECA) provides detailed historical information about enforcement and compliance activities at each RCRA Corrective Action Site in their Enforcement and Compliance Historical Online (ECHO) system.
RCRA Enforcement and Compliance Reports from ECHO
Related Information and Publicly Available Electronic Records
For more information about this facility, see these other EPA links:
- RCRA information in EPA’s Envirofacts database
- Information about this facility submitted to EPA under different environmental programs as reported in EPA’s Facility Registry Services
- Alternative Names for this facility as reported by EPA programs in EPA’s Facility Registry Services
- Cleanups in My Community provides an interactive map to see EPA cleanups in context with additional data, and lists for downloading data
- Search RCRA Corrective Action Sites provides a search feature for Corrective Action Sites
Documents, Photos and Graphics
Contacts for this Facility
EPA Region implements and enforces the RCRA Corrective Action program for and federally recognized tribes.
For further information on this corrective action site, use the Contact Information for Corrective Action Hazardous Waste Clean Ups listings that are accessible through Corrective Action Programs around the Nation.