The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has completed its comprehensive review of the site cleanup of the former municipal landfill on Tolend Road, a National Priority List site known as a Superfund site. The EPA's review was one of 14 in New England conducted this year.
The review, completed on Sept. 19, 2022, is the EPA's second five-year review of Dover's former municipal landfill, with the first finished on Sept. 25, 2017. The two reports and associated documents related to the site are available at www.epa.gov/superfund/dover. The reviews' purpose is to evaluate the implementation and performance of a remedy to determine if the remedy is and will continue to be protective of human health and the environment.
The Superfund program, a federal program established by Congress in 1980, investigates and cleans up the country's most complex, uncontrolled or abandoned hazardous waste sites and endeavors to facilitate activities to return them to productive use. In total, there are 123 Superfund sites across New England.
"Steadfast monitoring of Superfund site cleanup work is a priority for EPA, especially in communities overburdened by a legacy pollution," said EPA New England Regional Administrator David W. Cash in a press release. "By completing reviews of the cleanups every five years, EPA fulfills its duty to remain vigilant, continuing to protect human health and the environment in these communities."
Throughout the process of designing and constructing a cleanup at a hazardous waste site, EPA's primary goal is to make sure the remedy will be protective of public health and the environment. At many sites where the remedy has been constructed, EPA continues to ensure it remains protective by requiring reviews of cleanups every five years. It is important for EPA to regularly check on these sites to ensure the remedy is working properly. These reviews can identify issues that may affect the protectiveness of the completed remedy and, if necessary, recommend action(s) necessary to address them. There are many phases of the Superfund cleanup process, including considering future use and redevelopment at sites and conducting post-cleanup monitoring of sites. EPA must ensure the remedy protects public health and the environment, and any redevelopment will uphold the protectiveness of the remedy into the future.
The City of Dover owns the 50-acre inactive landfill on Tolend Road and operated it from 1960 to 1980. The landfill accepted domestic and industrial waste, including leather-tanning wastes, organic solvents, municipal trash and sludge from the Dover wastewater plant. Facility operations contaminated groundwater with volatile organic compounds and arsenic. In 1977, the state installed monitoring wells around the area and found that organic solvents were entering the groundwater, posing a potential threat to nearby residential wells and public water supplies for Dover and Portsmouth. The site was added to EPA's National Priorities List in 1983.
For more information about EPA's Superfund program, visit www.epa.gov/superfund. For the other New England sites reviewed in FY2022, visit www.epa.gov/newsreleases/epa-completesreviews-14-superfund-site-cleanups-new-england-during-2022.
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