EPA has added three new hazardous waste sites that pose risks to human health and the environment to the National Priorities List (NPL) of Superfund sites. Superfund is the federal program that investigates and cleans up the most complex, uncontrolled or abandoned hazardous waste sites in the country.

To date, there have been 1,610 sites listed on the NPL. Of these sites, 340 sites have been deleted resulting in 1,270 sites currently on the NPL. There are 63 proposed sites awaiting final agency action: 58 in the general Superfund section and five in the federal facilities section. There are a total of 1,333 final and proposed sites.

Contaminants found at the sites include arsenic, chlorine gas, chromium, copper, dioxins/furans, hexachlorobenzene, lead, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), and zinc.

With all Superfund sites, EPA tries to identify and locate the parties potentially responsible for the contamination. For the newly listed sites without viable potentially responsible parties, EPA will investigate the full extent of the contamination before starting significant cleanup at the site. Therefore, it may be several years before significant cleanup funding is required for these sites.

The following three sites have been added to the NPL:

• Raritan Bay Slag (Old Bridge Township/Sayreville, New Jersey)
• U.S. Magnesium (Tooele County, Utah)
• Peck Iron and Metal (Portsmouth, Virginia)