The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is seeking public comment on plans to remove the Northside Landfill in Spokane, Washington, from Superfund status.
As reported by The Spokesman-Review, the 345-acre site has been identified as a Superfund site since 1986, following the discovery of contaminants that included an industrial degreaser and dry-cleaning chemicals in the groundwater beneath the landfill.
Piles of buried trash taken to the site since 1931 had been buried in unlined pits, a practice that ended in 1991. Since then, the EPA has monitored groundwater from test wells located to the northwest of the site and determined in May that the landfill no longer needed to be listed as a location posing a risk to human health or the environment.
“While groundwater meets federal drinking water standards and treatment is no longer needed, groundwater monitoring will continue,” an EPA statement released July 14 said of the Northside Landfill site. “As an active landfill, the site will continue to be regulated by state and county agencies.”
The EPA tracks 1,335 sites as national priorities for cleanup. The agency is proposing removal of three Washington locations from the list, including the Northside Landfill, a former lumber treatment facility in Chehalis and the soil at a formal hazardous materials disposal site near Maple Valley.
Environmental regulators will be accepting written comment on the proposal to delete the landfill from its list of priority Superfund sites through Aug. 13.