Amid the uproar over the massive oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico, the federal government's Superfund hazardous-waste cleanup program marked its 30th birthday last week virtually unnoticed.
Moved by toxic dump nightmares uncovered in the 1970s like Love Canal in New York and Times Beach in Missouri, Congress passed the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act - better known as Superfund - in 1980. Since then, the government has identified and investigated tens of thousands of hazardous-waste sites, conducted emergency removal of poisonous chemicals at many and put nearly 3,000 abandoned dumps on its "National Priorities List" for long-term containment or cleanup.
As of the end of March, the Environmental Protection Agency reported that remedial work had been completed at nearly 1,100 priority sites, with partial completion at about 50 more. More than 300 sites were deleted from the prioirity cleanup list for various reasons. Yet nearly 1,300 sites remain in some stage of cleanup or containment, and the EPA is still adding new dumps to the list - 61 are proposeda this point. For a complete rundown, go here.
Maryland has 18 sites on the National Priorities List, with one more proposed. They're scattered all around the state with half on military bases or civiiian federal installations. Four Maryland sites have been "deleted" from the Superfund list, meaning they've either been cleaned up or the government determines no further action is needed to prevent contanimation from getting off site. For the state list, go here.
One of the four "deleted" cleanup sites in Maryland, though, isn't exactly cleaned up, though. Toxic vapors are still seeping into four homes in the Westport neighborhood in southern Baltimore, not farm from the long-ago demolished Chemical Metals Industries. More than 1,500 rusting, leaking drums were removed from that metal reclamation business in 1981, in the nation's first emergency removal action under the Superfund law.
Jay Apperson, spokesman for the Maryland Department of the Environment, said state officials have installed vapor collection systems in the basements of two homes and plan to put one in a third in the next few months. The occupant of a fourth home declined offers of help. Meanwhile, Apperson said, the state has overseen more than 200 injections of a chemical into the ground near the old plant in an attempt to break up the lingering subsurface plume of toxic solvents believe to be generating the vapors.
Superfund has been effective at quickly removing abandoned stockpiles of chemical drums and tanks, as in the case of Chemical Metals Industries, Apperson said in an email. Cleaning up contaminated soil and ground water has proven more difficult, the MDE spokesman acknowledged, but said even there there have been successes.
One he pointed to is an old industrial dump at Kane and Lombard streets in East Baltimore, where after removing some of the contamination authorities "capped" the lingering underground hazards and now allow the site to be used as a driving range.
(1996 Baltimore Sun photos: top, Maryland Sand & Gravel cleanup in Elkton, by Perry Thorsvik; left Kane & Lombard East Baltimore site fence, with monitoring well pipes, by Jed Kirschbaum.)