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EPA Drops Dupont Site From Superfund List

The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has removed Dupont Medical

Products of Pecks Lane from its federal Superfund/CERCLIS pollution cleanup

list.

EPA New England Regional Administrator John P. DeVillars announced that 273

properties in New England, among them the Dupont facility, no longer require

further EPA evaluation under the terms of the Superfund/CERCLIS cleanup

program. Combined with 626 properties removed from the Superfund/CERCLIS list

in 1995, the total number of firms removed from the list in New England now

stands at 899, Mr DeVillars said in a prepared statement.

The Dupont property has been removed from the Superfund/CERCLIS list because

it's been deemed to fall under the jusrisdiction of another EPA program, known

as the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA).

The Dupont site now will be assessed and remediated as deemed appropriate

under the RCRA project's corrective action program, according to the EPA.

The recategorization of the DuPont site from the Superfund/CERCLIS list to the

RCRA list is intended to facilitate its beneficial reuse and redevelopment,

according to EPA.

"EPA-New England knows where Superfund is needed and where it's not," said Mr

DeVillars. "Today's de-listing demonstrates how administrative changes can

encourage economic redevelopment of properties without harm to the

environment. And, importantly, it allows us to focus our scarce resources

where they're needed -- on the nearly 100 sites in New England where

containment and cleanup is necessary to protect public health," he said.

David Lim, of the RCRA program, said the EPA uses its Superfund program to

address the cleanup of pollution sites in situations where the company

responsible for the problem has disappeared or has gone out of business.

By transferring a property, such as the Dupont site, from the

Superfund/CERCLIS list to the RCRA list, the EPA is better able to utilize its

limited Superfund/CERCLIS resources for the most pressing pollution cleanup

work, according to Mr Lim.

Industrial pollution such as that at Dupont can be more efficiently handled

through the RCRA program, he noted.