EPA Finalizes Plan to Remove Contaminated Soil from Nepera Chemical Superfund Site in Orange County (NY)
The U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency today released an amended plan to remove contaminated soil
from the site of former lagoons at the Nepera Chemical Company,
Inc. Superfund site in Hamptonburgh, N.Y. in Orange County. EPA
developed three options to address soil contaminated with
potentially harmful volatile organic compounds at the former
lagoons and has selected excavation and off-site disposal of the
contaminated soil as the cleanup method. Excavation of the
contaminated soil will begin later this summer and will take
several months to complete. EPA held a public meeting and a public
comment period to gather input from the public on the three options
developed to address the contaminated soil. About 7,000 people live
within three miles of the site.
This plan amends EPA’s 2007
cleanup plan for the site, which called for excavating contaminated
soil and treating the soil on-site to degrade contaminants, but not
removing the soil from the site. The 2007 plan also included the
treatment of contaminated ground water at the site. The ground
water treatment activities at the site will not
change.
“EPA’s decision to remove
contaminated soil from the Nepera Chemical site represents the most
effective way to complete this critical phase of the site
cleanup,” said EPA Regional Administrator Judith A. Enck.
“The contaminants in this soil – especially
semi-volatile and volatile organic compounds – continue to
act as a source of ground water contamination, so removing them
must be a priority.”
Subsurface soil at the Nepera Chemical
site contains a variety of contaminants, including semi-volatile
and volatile organic compounds. People could be harmed if they
ingest or come into contact with contaminated soil or water. Ground
water samples from nearby residential wells and three public supply
wells have not revealed site-related contamination. Additionally,
the site is fenced in order to limit the potential for exposure to
site-related surface soil contamination.
The Nepera Chemical Company, Inc.,
Superfund site is a 29.3-acre former industrial waste disposal
facility. Nepera made a variety of pharmaceutical and industrial
chemicals. Between 1953 and 1967, lagoons at the site received
approximately 50,000 gallons of waste water per day from the Nepera
Chemical plant in Harriman, N.Y. The six backfilled lagoons cover
roughly five acres in total. State inspectors detected leaks from
the lagoons in 1958 and 1960, and operations ended in
1967.
Contamination at the site has been
addressed in two stages: short-term actions and a long-term
remedial phase focusing on cleanup of the entire site. The
short-term actions have included the filling of the lagoons in
1974, the construction of a fence limiting access to the site and
the disposal of three drums found during an excavation in 1991.
Ground water monitoring and soil sampling have been a primary
component of the long-term remedial investigation. EPA approved a
final remedial investigation study in 2006 and issued a record of
decision in 2007. This record of decision selected a plan that
included excavating contaminated soil and treating it on-site to
degrade the contaminants. Additional data collected since
initiating the 2007 plan showed that less soil than originally
expected would need to be remediated. The expected costs of
removing soil also decreased. In this amendment to the record of
decision, EPA selected a plan to remove the contaminated soil from
the site as it will significantly shorten the time needed to
complete the site cleanup.
The record of decision is available on
EPA’s website at https://www.epa.gov/aboutepa/epa-region-2.
It is also available at the Hamptonburgh Town Hall at 18 Bull Road,
Campbell Hall, N.Y. and EPA’s New York City office at 290
Broadway, 18th floor, New York, N.Y.
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