What Spots Are On The Naughty List?

The EPA Maintains The National Priorities List & They Just Added Another Toxic Site To More Than 1,300 Across The Country.

Photo by Sandy Millar on Unsplash

Last week, the U.S. EPA added the Upper Columbia River site in northeast Washington to the Superfund National Priorities List (NPL), a list of sites throughout the United States and its territories where historic releases of hazardous substances, pollutants, or contaminants pose significant threats to human health and the environment.

The soil is contaminated with lead and arsenic, posing an unacceptable risk to residents at affected properties, particularly to children and women of childbearing age, according to an EPA press release. Additionally, sediments in the river are contaminated with metals, including zinc, copper, cadmium, selenium, lead, and mercury, that pose a risk to fish, wildlife, birds, and other organisms that live in and along the river.

The primary source of contamination at the site is the Teck Metals Ltd. smelting facility in Trail, British Columbia, approximately 10 river miles upstream of the international boundary. The former Le Roi smelter in Northport, Washington, also contributed to the contamination.

“With the Upper Columbia River Site finally on the Superfund List, EPA can now more comprehensively address long public health and environmental risks posed by over 100 years of mining-related pollution," said Casey Sixkiller, Regional Administrator of EPA’s Region 10 office in Seattle. “This work will continue to be critical for the people and communities who deserve cleaner and healthier places to live, work, and play.”

For decades, the river has been used as a waste disposal site, which damaged the river and negatively impacted the Tribes of the Colville Reservation, according to Jarred-Michael Erickson, the Chairman of the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation.

“… a Superfund listing will unlock access to funds necessary for a thorough remediation of the river, and the listing reflects the high priority for cleanup that this site deserves,” Erickson said. “Everyone is better served if we clean the river now rather than pass the problem on to future generations.”

A History of Pollution Priorities…

Let’s unpack the EPA’s Superfund program a little more.

It began in 1980 as a means to clean up some of the country’s worst hazardous waste sites and to help respond to local and national environmental emergencies. Keep in mind most of these sites are private, corporate land, think former industrial and energy sites. They sit idle for decades until contamination is found. The federal spots are mostly former military bases.

A Superfund site is any land that has been contaminated by hazardous waste and identified by the EPA as a candidate for cleanup because it poses a risk to human health and/or the environment.

Most of these sites are “discovered” when the presence of hazardous waste is made known to the EPA, meaning communities usually find them first because people get sick. These places are full of asbestos, lead, radiation, and other hazardous materials, and they are not getting cleaned up fast enough.

How many people are aware these sites exist? How quickly and thoroughly do they get cleaned?

It was most likely a cold, December day in 1980 when President Jimmy Carter signed into law the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act (CERCLA) also known as Superfund. This historic statute gave EPA the authority to clean up uncontrolled hazardous waste sites and spills.

Then came the National Priorities List (NPL) in 1983, representing the worst of the worst—properties that are the most contaminated and pose the most risk to human health and the environment.

Since that time, many sites have been listed on the NPL and some have been remediated and removed. However, sites remain year after year, while more sites get added to the list.

In 2017, the NPL listed 1,336 sites, of which 1,179 were private and 157 were federal facilities. As of December 13, 2024, 1341 sites are on the NPL.

We have maintained this list for 41 years! And we have 5 more sites to clean up than in 2017. We are moving at a snail’s pace when it comes to cleaning up contamination. It’s hard work that requires a tremendous amount of skill and science.

The slow pace of this work is a big problem for our health.

About 211 million people live within three miles of a Superfund site, which is more than 60 percent of the U.S. population, and that includes 64 percent of all children in the U.S. under the age of five, according to EPA data.

In 2017, a Superfund Task Force put together recommendations for improvement, including “an expedited timeframe on how the agency can restructure the cleanup process, realign incentives of all involved parties to promote expeditious remediation, reduce the burden on cooperating parties, incentivize parties to remediate sites, encourage private investment in cleanups and sites and promote the revitalization of properties across the country.”

The report identified a number of opportunities to accelerate cleanup and reuse of Superfund cleanups. In fact, they identified 42 recommendations that could have been initiated without legislative changes within the next year.

But here we are…

When the Superfund program began in 1980 it was funded through taxes on domestic and imported petroleum and on chemical feedstocks. We deleted our first site, the Friedman Property site in New Jersey, in 1986.

We reauthorized the original CERCLA taxes on domestic and imported petroleum and chemical feedstocks and added new taxes on both imported chemical substances and on corporate environmental income through the end of 1991. These taxes were extended by Congress with the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1990 (OBRA) through the end of 1995.

After that, funding for Superfund shifted from mostly tax revenues appropriated by Congress each year to mostly general revenues appropriated by Congress to fund the program. RE: Oversight and cleanup of Superfund sites was largely paid for with our tax dollars from 1996 to 2021.

Private companies pollute, and we paid to clean it up.

That was until 2021 when Congress passed the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL), which earmarked $3.5 billion in environmental remediation at Superfund National Priorities List sites. It also reinstated the Superfund chemical taxes, which began in July 2022 and will remain until the end of 2031. This law was one of the largest investments in American history to address legacy pollution harming the public health of communities and neighborhoods.

And yet. we are still so far away from cleaning up so many of these sites.

Lingering On The NPL…

For example, in Washington State, which just added a new site, has 47 total toxic sites on the NPL at various levels of clean up. Some of these sites have stayed on the list for decades.

In January 1983, a resident of American Lake Gardens located about 7 miles south of downtown Tacoma, Washington, complained to EPA about family health problems, which she blamed on bad drinking water. She claimed that contamination resulting from disposal practices at McChord Air Force Base, which borders her property on three sides, was polluting her wells.

EPA and the Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department found high levels of iron, trichloroethylene, and 1,2-transdichloroethylene in her wells. Subsequent sampling identified several more contaminated wells nearby.

In all, 20 of the 57 wells in American Lake Gardens were tested. The Health Department advised owners of several wells serving about 25 people to use bottled water.

In March of 1984, EPA turned the site investigation over to the Air Force. The Air Force agreed to perform a remedial investigation/feasibility study to determine the type and extent of contamination at the site and identify alternatives for remedial action.

The Air Force provided bottled water to American Lake Gardens' residents dependent on contaminated wells. In addition, the Air Force sampled approximately 20 wells in the subdivision and constructed several additional monitoring wells on the McChord Air Force Base.

The site is addressed through federal actions. The long-term remedy includes groundwater extraction, treatment and monitoring, and groundwater use restrictions. Remedy construction took place between 1993 and 1994. Groundwater monitoring is ongoing. The site remains on the NPL.

Slow Wins In the South

EPA’s cleanup action at the Smokey Mountain Smelters Superfund Site in Knox County, Tennessee was completed in April 2024. This site joined the NPL in 2010.

The site, located 4 miles south of downtown Knoxville, is in a mixed industrial, commercial and residential area. A low-income apartment complex (Montgomery Village) sits within 75 feet of the site. The complex houses about 560 residents. Some single-family homes are also located nearby. The apartment complex includes recreational and playground areas and a daycare facility. Undeveloped property is located west of the site. Additional single-family homes are located to the east of the site and commercial and industrial properties are located to the north. The site is fenced and graded.

A series of fertilizer and agricultural chemical companies operated at the site from the 1920s to the 1960s. Smokey Mountain Smelters, also known as Rotary Furnace, Inc., operated at the site from 1979 to 1994. The facility was a secondary aluminum smelting operation. The process involved the melting of scrap aluminum and aluminum dross, a smelting waste byproduct, and casting the molten aluminum metal bars. Raw materials at the facility primarily consisted of scrap aluminum and aluminum dross. Waste material from the operation was primarily saltcake, a residue with high salt and low metal content from dross smelting. Other waste materials included baghouse dust and discarded aluminum dross.

EPA placed the site on the NPL in 2010 because of contaminated soils, sediment and surface water resulting from past industrial operations at the site.

The cleanup action, accelerated through $2.6 million of BIL funding, makes it one of the first BIL-funded cleanup actions completed in the Southeast.

During the scope of the cleanup, approximately 15,000 cubic yards of contaminated soil from the former processing building was excavated. In addition, 11,000 gallons of a treatment solution was injected into shallow groundwater wells to treat contaminated groundwater. Two of three site parcels were purchased by a private party who has plans for future redevelopment of the site.

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Got some extra time during the holidays? You can check out the full NPL list here, and see what superfund sites might be near you and discover how clean-up efforts are going.

To learn more about the full history of the Superfund program, click here.