DALLAS – (Oct. 13, 2020) Recently, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced the deletion of all or part of 27 sites from the National Priorities List, including the full deletion of the Tulsa Fuel & Manufacturing site in Collinsville, Oklahoma. This marks the third year in a row that EPA has deleted a historically high number of Superfund sites, sending a clear message that human health and the environment are protected and paving the way for redeveloping these properties into community assets.
“The attention and focus the Trump Administration has put on the Superfund program is making a real difference in the lives of people living in communities near Superfund sites across the country,” said EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler. “Clean up and deletion from the NPL helps communities move forward, allowing land to be repurposed and reused in more productive ways. We’re proud of the progress we’ve made.”
“The Tulsa Fuel & Manufacturing site is an example of EPA’s Superfund program at its best—a formerly contaminated site that has not only been cleaned up, but restored for a new purpose as home to bee hives for local honey businesses,” said Regional Administrator Ken McQueen. “EPA thanks our state and local partners who made the progress at this site possible and helped turn a former public health hazard into a community asset.”
EPA deletes sites or parts of sites from the NPL when no further cleanup is required to protect human health or the environment. Years, and sometimes decades, of complex investigation and cleanup work have gone into getting these sites to where they are today. EPA proposed to delete the Tulsa Fuel & Manufacturing site in July 2020. EPA did not receive any comments during the 30-day public comment period, which ended on August 16.
While EPA encourages site reuse throughout the cleanup process, deletions from the NPL can help revitalize communities and promote economic growth by signaling to potential developers and financial institutions that cleanup is complete. Over the past several years, the EPA has placed special emphasis on deleting sites and portions of sites to demonstrate to communities that cleanup is complete.
During the first term of the Trump Administration, EPA has deleted all or part of 82 sites from the NPL matching the site year total over two terms of the previous administration. In FY 2017, EPA doubled the number of full and partial sites deleted over the previous fiscal year with a total of six sites. In FY 2018, the Agency increased the total number of deletions to 22, and in FY 2019, increased it to 27. This past year, in FY 2020, EPA continued to achieve a historically high rate of deletions with 14 full sites and parts of 13 additional sites, for a total of 27 deletion activities.
In FY 2020, EPA employees initiated a project to evaluate and improve the deletion process and as a result consolidated the rulemaking process to streamline the administrative steps involved in deleting sites from the NPL. Going forward, this improvement is expected to reduce workloads, shorten process lead-times and lower program costs.
Additional information about EPA’s NPL deletions can be viewed at https://www.epa.gov/superfund/deleted-nationalpriorities-list-npl-sites-state
The Superfund Task Force Accomplishments can be viewed at https://www.epa.gov/superfund/superfund-task-forcerecommendations-and-accomplishments
To search for information about these and other NPL sites, please visit https://www.epa.gov/superfund/searchsuperfund-sites-where-you-live.