The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced on Thursday it has deleted 117 properties from the Community Soils portion of the Palmerton Zinc Pile Site in Palmerton from the Superfund National Priorities List.

The Superfund list contains the nation’s most contaminated hazardous waste sites. The EPA published a Federal Register Notice on May 14 that deleted or proposed to delete all or part of 25 sites nationally from the NPL.

The Palmerton Zinc Pile Site is the area of a former primary zinc smelting operation. The site encompasses the Borough of Palmerton and surrounding areas, Blue Mountain and a large smelting residue pile called the Cinder Bank. The smelting operations at the site emitted huge quantities of heavy metals and was formally added to the list in September 1983.

Borough Manager Donna McGarry said Friday the borough was aware of the situation.

“Certainly it’s good news for those properties,” McGarry said. “This will be something that will be helpful to the property owners.”

EPA deletes sites or parts of sites from the list when no further cleanup is required to protect human health or the environment. Years, and sometimes decades, of complex investigation and cleanup work have gone into getting these sites to the point where they can be deleted from the NPL.

“Deletions from the NPL can revitalize communities, raise property values, and promote economic growth by signaling to potential developers and financial institutions that cleanup is complete,” said Acting EPA Regional Administrator Diana Esher. “This can be especially impactful for disadvantaged and overburdened communities.”

EPA, in coordination with the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, is overseeing the cleanup of the Palmerton Zinc Pile Site, which is being carried out by the potentially responsible party, ViacomCBS.

The site has been divided into four separate cleanups known as operable units, and include Blue Mountain (OU-1), Cinder Bank (OU-2), Community Soils (OU-3), and Groundwater, Surface Water and Ecological Risks (OU-4).

The EPA has determined that all appropriate response actions for 117 properties of OU-3 have been completed, and no human or environmental health concerns remain, so these properties may be removed from the Superfund NPL.

During the Community Soils remediation, EPA worked with ViacomCBS to develop plans to get access to the properties and conduct soil sampling to determine if cleanup was necessary. EPA identified 2,410 properties as eligible for soil sampling. Of these, 1,701 properties were sampled, and analytical results found that 190 properties had lead concentrations greater than EPA’s cleanup standard and qualified for cleanup.

Of those 190 properties, 184 exterior soil cleanups were completed where access was granted, and 117 properties were fully remediated which included excavation of exterior soils and removal of lead contaminated interior dust.

EPA announced its intent to partially delete portions of Operable Unit 3 on Nov. 20, beginning a 30-day public comment period during which EPA received no significant comments.

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