An official website of the United States government.

This is not the current EPA website. To navigate to the current EPA website, please go to www.epa.gov. This website is historical material reflecting the EPA website as it existed on January 19, 2021. This website is no longer updated and links to external websites and some internal pages may not work. More information »

News Releases

News Releases from Region 01

EPA Finalizes Removal of Superfund Designation from 10-acre Parcel of Industri-Plex Superfund Site in Woburn, Mass.

10/05/2020
Contact Information: 
David Deegan (Deegan.Dave@epa.gov)
(617) 918-1017

BOSTON - The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has finalized the deletion of a 10.7-acre parcel from the ongoing cleanup of the Industri-Plex Superfund Site in Woburn, Massachusetts. The parcel being removed from Superfund designation is located at 200 Presidential Way.

Today’s action is one of 27 sites across the country in which EPA is removing all or a portion of a site from the Superfund National Priorities List (NPL). This 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.

“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.”

EPA and the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection (MassDEP) have determined that all appropriate response actions at the parcel under the Superfund program have been completed, and no human and environmental health concerns remain on the parcel, thus the parcel may be removed from the NPL. This partial deletion pertains to soil and groundwater of the 10.7-acre parcel at 200 Presidential Way but does not impact the continued NPL designation of the remaining areas of the Industri-Plex Superfund Site.

“EPA is very proud to be taking action to remove a portion of this Woburn, Massachusetts site from the federal Superfund list,” said EPA New England Regional Administrator Dennis Deziel. “We are making good on our commitment to protect the people we serve and support local community revitalization by allowing land to be safely redeveloped for productive use when cleanup measures have been successfully completed. This will help further spur the local economy and create jobs and homes here in Woburn.”

The Industri-Plex Superfund Site was once a former chemical and glue manufacturing facility. EPA and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts have performed numerous actions since the 1980s to remove contamination at the site and to reduce risks to human health and the environment. The site was added to the national priorities list in 1983. On most of the site, EPA determined that residual contamination meant that future uses could include commercial but not residential uses. However, on the parcel now known as 200 Presidential Way, no use restrictions are necessary.

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.

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.

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.

More information on EPA’s efforts at the site: https://19january2021snapshot.epa.gov/superfund/industriplex .

#  #  #