Superfund status for the CTS site likely won’t be decided in September: EPA officials recently told residents that placing the contaminated Mills Gap Road site on the federal National Priorities List — a key move toward Superfund status and cleanup — may be delayed. Listing the site on the NPL would declare the abandoned plant and property among the most contaminated in the nation. It would also potentially bring federal dollars to help with the cleanup — something Mills Gap residents have long awaited.
In a private meeting this past week, EPA officials told residents that the detailed, written responses the agency is legally bound to provide — addressing all the public comments that have been received — are time-consuming to prepare. Samantha Urquhart-Foster, the EPA’s Remedial Project Manager, and Carter Williamson, the agency’s On-Scene Coordinator, reportedly said that the EPA has received so much feedback on the prospect of NPL listing that they may need to postpone a decision for an unspecified time. Public comments, and the agency’s response to them, will be published in the Federal Register, the U.S. government’s official journal.
Listing had been anticipated in September, when the NPL is scheduled for its regular update. And it’s still a possibility, NPL coordinator Jennifer Wendel, tells Xpress. But if they miss the deadline for publication of the updated list in September, the EPA can issue a special notice of the listing which could published separately later. The next scheduled update to the NPL doesn’t occur until March.
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