News Releases from Region 09

EPA Announces 2018 Annual Superfund Accomplishments, Including Proposed Listings in California

SAN FRANCISCO – Today, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is releasing Superfund’s annual report covering major accomplishments and environmental progress during fiscal year 2018. The Superfund program is a top priority for EPA under President Trump, and the agency is making great strides in accelerating sites through remediation and back to productive use. As detailed in the report, communities across the country are benefitting from these efforts.

“We are proud to report that in Fiscal Year 2018 EPA deleted all or part of 22 sites from the National Priorities List, the largest number of deletions in one year since 2005,” said EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler. “By renewing and elevating our focus on Superfund under President Trump, we are accelerating cleanups, returning sites to productive reuse, and revitalizing communities across the country.”

“In California, we have proposed adding two sites to the National Priorities List as part of our commitment and focus on addressing contamination in our communities,” said EPA Pacific Southwest Regional Administrator Mike Stoker. “Our agency’s actions under Superfund have tangible, local results and help ensure that public health and the environment are protected.”

In addition to proposing two new sites to the National Priority List (NPL) in California – Copper Bluff Mine in Hoopa and Orange County North Basin – EPA has partially delisted the Pacific Coast Pipe Lines site in Fillmore. The agency also responded to major emergencies in the Pacific Southwest, including removing household hazardous waste to advance the recovery from 2017’s wildfires in Northern California and providing air monitoring support during the Kilauea volcano eruption in Hawaii.

Highlights of EPA’s 2018 accomplishments include:

• Improving human health for people living near our sites by controlling potential or actual human exposure risk at 32 additional Superfund NPL sites and controlling the migration of contaminated groundwater at 29 sites.
   
• Deleting 18 full and four partial sites from the NPL – the largest number of deletions in one year since 2005 – signaling to the surrounding communities that EPA has completed the job of transforming these once highly contaminated areas.
   
• Returning sites to communities for redevelopment by identifying 51 additional sites as having all long-term protections in place and meeting our “sitewide ready for anticipated use” designation, the highest annual result since 2013.
   
• Completing or providing oversight of 242 Superfund removal actions at sites where contamination posed an imminent and substantial threat to human health and the environment.
   
• Quickly and effectively responding to large scale emergencies brought on by hurricanes, wildfires, and other natural disasters in California, North Carolina, Puerto Rico and elsewhere.
   
• Moving many sites closer to completion by making decisions that have been delayed, including West Lake Landfill in Bridgeton, Mo.; USS Lead in East Chicago, Ind.; and San Jacinto Waste Pits in Channelview, Texas.

In addition, in July 2018, on the one-year anniversary of the agency’s Superfund Task Force Recommendations, EPA issued a report covering Task Force accomplishments to date and laying out its plan for completing the remaining recommendations in 2019.

Click here to read the full report: https://19january2021snapshot.epa.gov/superfund/superfund-remedial-annual-accomplishments