[CPEO-BIF] Superfund reuse in EPA Region 9 (Pacific Southwest)

[Lenny Siegel <lsiegel@cpeo.org>]

At the National League of Cities Conference on Tuesday, EPA’s new Administrator Scott Pruitt expressed frustration that many sites have been on the “Superfund” National Priorities List for decades, and they are not yet cleaned up. We would all like to accelerate cleanup, but as the National Research Council has repeatedly found, there are huge  technical and financial obstacles to returning properties with significant or complex subsurface contamination to levels allowing unlimited use and unrestricted exposure.

Nevertheless, in my city of Mountain View and many other communities, Superfund properties have been addressed to the point where they can safely be reused. For example, last week we approved (literally, I voted for this as a Council member) Google’s proposal for an iconic world headquarters, above the distal portion of the Teledyne-Spectra Physics plume. Symantec’s world headquarters, among other tech office buildings, sits within Mountain View's MEW Superfund Study Area.

The Symantec property is one of many Superfund reuses featured in U.S. EPA’s August 2016 booklet, "Superfund Sites Work for Communities: How Superfund Redevelopment in EPA Region 9 Is Making a Difference in Communities.” Go to https://semspub.epa.gov/work/HQ/191000.pdf to download the 3.5 MB PDF.

Other EPA Regions have prepared similar reports, but I have not been able to find recent versions on line. If you know where one can download them, please post a reply to the list or send me the link.

Lenny

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Lenny Siegel
Executive Director
Center for Public Environmental Oversight
a project of the Pacific Studies Center
P.O. Box 998, Mountain View, CA 94042
Voice/Fax: 650/961-8918 
<lsiegel@cpeo.org>
http://www.cpeo.org

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