Asheville's Superfund Site Seeks Millions From PRPs

By: Duane Craig

The Environmental Protection Agency has billed two potentially responsible parties $6.5 million to cover the agency's costs to date in remediating the CTS of Asheville National Priorities Superfund site at 235 Mills Gap Road in Asheville N.C., according to an article in the Citizen-Times.

The site is widely contaminated with solvents such as trichloroethylene, or TCE, and residents have linked the contamination to cases of cancer in children. The EPA is currently monitoring 105 private water wells in the area, and in the past the agency paid to connect residents to municipal water when a spring and five private water wells turned out to be contaminated with not only TCE but also petroleum compounds, according to the EPA's report on the site.

Ashville Superfund site still contaminated with trichloroethylene

Residents are tired of the time it has taken to get cleanup actions started, and they welcomed the news of the EPA's latest efforts to get the two companies involved to pay up. Contamination is expected to lie below a 79,000-square-foot deteriorating building that is used by gangs, drug dealers and their users. The EPA has also been conducting vapor intrusion assessments and has been pressuring the responsible parties to plan and implement remediation tactics. A soil vapor extraction operation has so far removed 6,000 pounds of solvents from soils just above the water table.