EPA adds 12 new sites to Superfund list

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) this week added 12 new contaminated sites to its Superfund list for cleanup. 

It announced on Thursday that it would add the dozen sites to its list of more than 1,300 Superfund sites slated for cleanup efforts and would propose five additional sites for the list. 

The sites are in Massachusetts, New York, Maryland, West Virginia, Georgia, South Carolina, Tennessee, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Oregon. 

Administrator Michael Regan said in a statement that about two-thirds of them are in areas that either are underserved or face disproportionate pollution impacts in general. 

“No community deserves to have contaminated sites near where they live, work, play, and go to school,” Regan said. “EPA is building a better America by taking action to clean up some of the nation’s most contaminated sites, protect communities’ health, and return contaminated land to safe and productive reuse for future generations.”

The Biden administration has said that it would update the list of contaminated sites twice per year. Sites on the list are considered to be the most serious, and sites on it can be considered priorities for cleanup funding.