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EPA Proposes To Move Spokane's Northside Landfill From Superfund List

Washington Department of Ecology

 

The Environmental Protection Agency is seeking public comment on plans to remove Spokane's Northside Landfill from Superfund status.

 

In the 1980's regulators discovered the groundwater adjacent to the landfill was picking up chemicals known as PCEs from the years of accumulated waste. The EPA put the site on its national priorities list for cleanup.

 

The landfill was closed to the public in 1991, and a cap installed over it, which kept water from percolating through the site.

 

EPA spokesman Jeremy Jennings says several years have passed since the treatment of the area was completed.

“Since 2012 we have been monitoring and watching the continual decline since the extraction treatment system was shut down in 2012," Jennings said.

 

If the project is removed from the EPA priority list, the city of Spokane would no longer have to conduct routine monitoring of the site, or maintain the equipment that pumped out contaminated water. It has been kept on standby.

EPA would still review the standing of the site every five years for 20 years.

 

Jennings says the agency is now seeking public comment now through August 13 on the proposal to remove it from the list.
 

What we're asking is whether anyone in the community has any reasons there may be any problems up there related to contaminated groundwater that we might not be aware of," he said.

 

Comment can be given on the EPA website.