Crossley Farms site in Hereford Township and Lansdale site receive clean-up funds from the EPA
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The Crossley Farms site in Hereford Township is one of nearly 50 toxic waste sites in the United States that will be cleaned up as federal environmental officials on Friday announced a $ 1 billion injection into the Superfund program.
The site will receive $ 5.5 million in funding, according to Democratic Governor Tom Wolf’s website. The Hereford site was added to the Superfund list in 1992.
The spill of 55 gallon drums of trichlorethylene began at Crossley Farm at least 50 years ago. Cleaning continues.
In the 1960s and 1970s, at least 1,200 barrels of carcinogenic industrial solvent and degreaser were salvaged from Bally Case & Cooler Co. and buried with household trash in a pit on the then-owned 209-acre dairy farm. to brothers Harry and James Crossley.
In 1997, the United States Environmental Protection Agency installed water treatment systems in homes served by approximately 65 contaminated wells.
Trichlorethylene, or TCE, can cause cancer and has harmful effects on the nervous system, liver, respiratory system, kidneys, blood, immune system, and heart. TCE does not dissolve in water and will not fade over time.
The money comes from the $ 1,000 billion infrastructure bill President Joe Biden enacted last month and will help officials tackle a backlog of highly polluted Superfund sites in 24 states that have languished for years in due to a lack of funding, the EPA said.
About 60% of the sites to be cleaned up are in low-income and minority communities that have suffered disproportionately from contamination left behind by closed manufacturing plants, landfills and other abandoned industrial operations.
“No community should have to live in the shadow of contaminated waste sites,” EPA administrator Michael Regan said Friday at the Lower Darby Creek Superfund site in Philadelphia, where a former landfill has leached out. chemicals in the soil and groundwater of the majority minority area of ​​Eastwick.
The other funded site in Pennsylvania is in Lansdale, “within the North Penn Water Authority and … was found to have elevated levels of trichloroethene in 1979,” according to Wolf’s website. None of Berks’ other Superfund sites were mentioned.
The funding is the first installment of a $ 3.5 billion loan to the bipartisan infrastructure act’s Superfund program. The announcement comes a day after Regan disclosed plans to release $ 2.9 billion in infrastructure law funds for lead pipe removal nationwide and to impose tougher rules for limit exposure to lead, a significant health risk.
Pennsylvania has two sites on the Superfund backlog list and 90 on the Superfund list as a whole.
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