News Releases from Region 05

EPA deletes 27 sites from Superfund National Priorities List in FY 2020, including eight in Region 5 States of Illinois, Indiana, Minnesota, Ohio and Wisconsin

For Immediate Release No. 20-OPA-024

CHICAGO (October 14, 2020) – Last week, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Regional Administrator Kurt Thiede was joined by Mayor Mike Wellner, U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany and Wisconsin State Rep. James Edming at an event in Medford, Wis. to announce the delisting of the Scrap Processing Superfund Site from the National Priorities List (NPL). The Medford site is one of 27 nationwide – and among eight in EPA Region 5 -that were deleted -in whole or in part- from the NPL in the past fiscal year.

"This administration is keeping its promise to pick up the pace of Superfund cleanups – projects that languished under previous administrations,” said Region 5 Administrator Kurt Thiede. “Deleting sites, like the one in Medford, will allow communities to move forward without the stigma of having a Superfund site.”

“No city wants to have a Superfund site. It is exciting to know that Medford won’t have one any longer,” said Mayor Mike Wellner. “This can only help with our economic growth for the city and our surrounding communities.”

“This is a great day for the Medford community,” said Wisconsin State Rep. James Edming.  “I appreciate all of the hard work that has gone into cleaning up this area to make it safe for the people of Medford.”

• EPA also deleted the following seven Superfund sites in Region 5 from the NPL this year:

• DuPage County Landfill/Blackwell Forest, Warrenville, Ill.

• Southeast Rockford Groundwater Contamination, Rockford, Ill. (partial)

• Douglass Road/Uniroyal Inc., Landfill, Mishawaka, Ind. (partial)

• Fort Wayne Reduction Dump, Fort Wayne, Ind. (partial)

• USS Lead, East Chicago, Ind. (partial)

• Allied Chemical & Ironton Coke, Ironton, Ohio (partial)

• Fridley Commons Park Well Field Landfill, Fridley, Minn.

“The attention and focus the Trump Administration has put on the Superfund program is making a real difference in the lives of people living in communities near Superfund sites across the country,” said EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler. “Clean up and deletion from the NPL helps communities move forward, allowing land to be repurposed and reused in more productive ways. We’re proud of the progress we’ve made.”

FY 2020 marks the third year in a row that EPA has deleted a historically high number of Superfund sites, sending a clear message that human health and the environment are protected and paving the way for redeveloping these properties into community assets.

During the first term of the Trump Administration, EPA has deleted all or part of 82 sites from the NPL matching the site year total over two terms of the previous administration. In FY 2017, EPA doubled the number of full and partial sites deleted over the previous fiscal year with a total of six sites. In FY 2018, the Agency increased the total number of deletions to 22, and in FY 2019, increased it to 27. This past year, in FY 2020, EPA continued to achieve a historically high rate of deletions with 14 full sites and parts of 13 additional sites, for a total of 27 deletion activities.

EPA deletes sites or parts of sites from the NPL when no further cleanup is required to protect human health or the environment. Years, and sometimes decades, of complex investigation and cleanup work have gone into getting these sites to where they are today.

While EPA encourages site reuse throughout the cleanup process, deletions from the NPL can help revitalize communities and promote economic growth by signaling to potential developers and financial institutions that cleanup is complete. Over the past several years, the EPA has placed special emphasis on deleting sites and portions of sites to demonstrate to communities that cleanup is complete.

In FY 2020, EPA employees initiated a project to evaluate and improve the deletion process and as a result consolidated the rulemaking process to streamline the administrative steps involved in deleting sites from the NPL. Going forward, this improvement is expected to reduce workloads, shorten process lead-times and lower program costs.

Additional information about EPA’s NPL deletions can be viewed at https://19january2021snapshot.epa.gov/superfund/deleted-national-priorities-list-npl-sites-state

The Superfund Task Force Accomplishments can be viewed at https://19january2021snapshot.epa.gov/superfund/superfund-task-force-recommendations-and-accomplishments

To search for information about these and other NPL sites, please visit https://19january2021snapshot.epa.gov/superfund/search-superfund-sites-where-you-live

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