Investigation documents dangers at Hometown Superfund sites

The Center for Public Integrity, a Washington-based nonprofit that produces investigative journalism on issues of public concern, recently published a story documenting at least 114 Superfund sites where the threat from dangerous and sometimes carcinogenic substances is not under control, and 224 sites where the migration of contaminated groundwater is not under control -- and Eastern Diversified Metals in Hometown and McAdoo Associates just north of the village are among the sites on the latter list.

The investigation documents complaints that will strike a familiar chord with many Hometown-area residents:

People living near some of the most contaminated areas complain that the EPA favors private interests over their own and that their health suffers the consequences of government neglect.

Indeed, the EPA has continuously ignored the demands of Hometown-area residents for a thorough clean-up at the sites, instead kowtowing to the responsible polluters by favoring cheaper options at every step of the so-called "remediation" process.

CPI also raises concerns about EPA's choice to "cap" sites -- that is, to cover them with a plastic liner and dirt without addressing below-ground contamination. That's the remedy the agency chose for the EDM site despite vociferous objections from local residents, who among other things point out that capping does nothing to address the plume of the cancer-causing solvent trichloroethylene that runs beneath the site, which drains into a tributary of the Little Schuylkill River. CPI reports:

At another Superfund site in Pensacola, Fla., the EPA plans to place a giant tarp covered with soil and clay over "Mt. Dioxin," a nearly 600,000-cubic-yard mound of dirt contaminated with arsenic, dioxin, PCBs and other highly toxic material harmful to human health and whose exposure to humans is "not under control," according to the EPA.

The Pensacola site was created by another wood-treating facility, operated by Escambia Wood Treating Co. The EPA has determined that migration of groundwater off the site is also not under control.

In deciding among proposed cleanup plans, the EPA acknowledged that the one it settled on, which emphasizes containment, would not be as effective as alternatives that focus on treatment. But the agency maintained that its approach would "result in a substantially equivalent degree of protectiveness" at one-fifth the cost.

Several scientists and activists disagree.

"It's a high-tech engineered version of burying the stuff in a plastic bag," said Frances Dunham, a leading member of Citizens Against Toxic Exposure, an environmental watchdog group in Pensacola, Fla.

Among the contaminants being buried at EDM, where metals were reclaimed from phone cables, are dioxin, PCBs and lead -- all carcinogens.

I was interested to see McAdoo Associates on CPI's list of sites with uncontrolled migration of contaminated groundwater. The issue of contaminants running off the site -- a former coal mine that in the 1970s was turned into an illegal industrial waste dump used by some of America's biggest corporations -- has repeatedly come up in public discussions of the high rate of polycythemia vera among residents of Ben Titus Road, a community located downhill from the site.

The EPA has repeatedly assured local residents that any contaminants escaping from the site could not affect the private wells and municipal reservoir that lie along Ben Titus Road. However, the fact that the agency's own records acknowledge that the migration of contaminated groundwater from the site is in fact "uncontrolled" would seem to call any official assurances about its eventual destination into question.