Healthy Communities In the News

A nearly 20-year-old program that funds cleanup at contaminated toxic dumpsites throughout the state will run out of money by the end of the week.

To avert what they see as a potential environmental and public health crisis, officials with the state Department of Environmental Protection have teamed up with statewide environmental advocacy groups, including PennEnvironment and PennFuture, to fight the program’s imminent demise.

The program’s lack of money will delay, and possibly even halt, the cleanup of groundwater and soil pollution at hundreds of sites in Pennsylvania — including 10 projects in Bucks County.

With the program in flux, decades of pollution will worsen and public health will be put in jeopardy as drinking supplies remain contaminated for years and vital soil testing is put off indefinitely, according to David Masur, director of PennEnvironment.

"The effects could be numerous and also disastrous," Masur said. "It’s quite dire."

The program is funded by the state’s Hazardous Sites Cleanup Fund, established in 1988, and pays for emergency cleanup of contaminated industrial sites. The program has been without a dedicated funding source since 2002, when it received a one-time allocation of $50 million.

That $50 million will be gone by the end of the month and there’s no promise of more money, according to Lynda Rebarchak, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Environmental Protection.

That means the future of cleanups at polluted industrial sites, including sites in Bucks from Bristol Township to Nockamixon, will be put in peril, Rebarchak said.

"A lot of needed work would not be accomplished or not accomplished in a timely manner," she said.

If the funding woes continue, residents who get drinking water from a contaminated water supply might have to drink bottled water for years instead of days, and contamination could spread at polluted sites due to a lack of testing, Rebarchak said. The pollutants cleaned up at the sites might cause cancer or birth defects and, if not cleaned up, the chemicals could seep into groundwater or soil further or evaporate into the air that residents breathe, she said.

The fund is used to pay for emergency cleanups at sites where the cleanup could be delayed for years by legal battles with the sites’ owners or at so-called "orphan sites," where it’s unclear what caused the contamination, Rebarchak said.

"Our first goal is to make sure people are safe," she said.

The Legislature soon will consider a bill, introduced by state Rep. Dan Surra, D-Elk, that would finance the Hazardous Sites Cleanup Fund by raising the tipping fee on municipal waste at Pennsylvania landfills by $2.75 a ton. Most of the money raised through the increased fees would directly fund the toxic cleanup program. The plan, which is supported by Gov. Ed Rendell, is expected to generate $50.2 million a year for the cleanup fund.

The need for the money is going to be there for several years, so why should we leave it up to the whims of the Legislature every year?" Masur asked. "Every year or two years we don’t want to be back searching for more money."

Bucks hazardous sites being cleaned up

• Bristol Township, groundwater contamination in Croydon
  
• Doylestown Township, groundwater contamination at Vandor Manufacturing
  
• Doylestown Township and Buckingham, groundwater contamination at Furlong Manufacturing
  
• Doylestown and Doylestown Township, groundwater and surface water contamination at Chem Fab
  
• Hilltown and Bedminster, groundwater contamination at Morris Run
  
• Nockamixon, groundwater and soil contamination at Arrow Carting Landfill
  
• Sellersville, groundwater and surface water contamination at Sellersville Landfill
  
• Warrington, groundwater contamination
  
• West Rockhill, soil contamination at Forrest Road Dump
  
• Wrightstown, groundwater contamination at Mill Creek

For more information on the sites access:
www.pennenvironment.org/healthy-communities/cleaning-up-toxic-waste-sites/hsca-sites

Source: Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection