On October 15, the EPA announced that there will be a new investigation at the Delaware City PVC Plant Superfund. Officials will study two aquifers flagged by an EPA review of the site that took place last year.
Remediation efforts began in 1982 due to the Stauffer Chemical Company’s waste disposal practices, which involved dumping chemical waste from the plant into lagoons and pits. Some of these chemicals, including vinyl chloride, are classified by the EPA as human carcinogens and can cause liver damage.
When remediation efforts began, the contamination had affected local wells used for drinking water and agriculture. Currently, there are no longer any drinking water sources connected to the site.
EPA officials thought a shallow aquifer located east of the PVC facility had been treated by previous remediation efforts. But Charlie Root, who oversees remediation projects in Delaware for the EPA, says that recently gathered data has forced them to reconsider that conclusion.
“It was thought it was remediated by those [previous] remedies and then over time, it was determined that [the aquifer] was part of the contamination that was further away from what those technologies could address," said Root.
A deeper aquifer located at the site will also be studied.
Bayer CropScience LP, a biotech company that owns a portion of the Superfund, will conduct the investigation, as required by their recent settlement with the EPA. The EPA expects samples will be collected sometime in 2016 and a course of action settled on in the next couple of years.
