The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced it will conduct comprehensive reviews of cleanup work at nine National Priorities List Superfund sites across Minnesota this year.
Each site will undergo a five-year review to ensure that ongoing or completed remediation efforts continue to protect public health and the environment. Upon completion, a report will be available online on each site's website.
"As required by the Superfund law, five-year reviews are a critical checkpoint to verify that completed cleanups are still doing their job—protecting people, drinking water, and ecosystems—and to course-correct if new data or site conditions warrant action. We will conduct these reviews transparently and share the results so residents can be assured that EPA is maintaining strong, science-based oversight," according to EPA Region 5 Administrator Anne Vogel.
The EPA said that five-year reviews are generally required when hazardous substances remain on site above levels that permit unlimited use and unrestricted exposure. The agency said these reviews provide an opportunity to evaluate the implementation and performance of a remedy to determine whether it remains protective of human health and the environment. The EPA retains responsibility for determining the protectiveness of the remedy.
This year’s reviews will cover South Andover Site (Andover), Waste Disposal Engineering (Andover), Burlington Northern (Brainerd/Baxter Plant) (Brainerd/Baxter), Dakhue Sanitary Landfill (Cannon Falls), East Bethel Demolition Landfill (East Bethel Township), Arrowhead Refinery Co. (Hermantown), Lehillier/Mankato (Lehillier), Perham Arsenic Site (Perham), and Reilly Tar & Chemical Corp. (St. Louis Park Plant) (St. Louis Park). More information about each site is available through web links provided by the agency.
The Superfund program was established by Congress in 1980 as a federal initiative to investigate and clean up complex, uncontrolled, or abandoned hazardous waste sites in the country, with efforts aimed at returning them to productive use, according to the official roster page.
