Clean land enforcement accomplishments, fiscal year 2003

2003 Quick Finder
Introduction to Enforcement Accomplishments , FY 2003	Air	Pesticides
Introduction to Enforcement Accomplishments , FY 2003	Land	Supplemental Actions
Emergency Response & Community Right-To-Know	Water	Criminal investigation

EPA negotiated settlements totaling nearly $40 million for the cleanup of the Casmalia Resources Superfund site, a former hazardous waste disposal facility in Central California. Settlements resulting in $31.9 million of the total are part of four separate consent decrees involving 46 private parties and four federal agencies. Each of the settling parties is considered a major generator of large volumes of waste sent to the site. The settlements require all of the parties to pay their pro-rated share of cleanup costs. EPA also reached $8 million in settlements with 25 additional parties who each sent relatively small amounts of waste to the site. The Casmalia site was a commercial hazardous waste treatment, storage and disposal facility located 10 miles from Santa Maria, CA. Between 1972 and 1989, the site accepted over 5.5 billion pounds of hazardous waste, including seven million drums of waste.

EPA reached a final settlement for the North Indian Bend Wash (NIBW) Superfund Site in Scottsdale, AZ that requires restoration of a 95 billion gallon TCE-contaminated drinking water aquifer by using four treatment plant systems. Groundwater at NIBW is contaminated by toxic volatile organic compounds. Scottsdale and Paradise Valley receive drinking water from two groundwater plants. One system treats, then provides water for agricultural use, and the final system treats and reinjects the water in the aquifer. EPA amended an earlier cleanup decision after the plume was discovered migrating north potentially contaminating the drinking water supply of Paradise Valley. The total cost of the cleanup is estimated at $129 million; the estimated value of the current settlement is $70 million. Responsible parties Motorola, Inc., Siemens Corp, SmithKline Beecham, Inc. the Salt River Project and the City of Scottsdale will build and operate the treatment systems.

EPA reached a $10 million settlement requiring 17 companies to clean up the Waste Disposal Inc. Superfund site in Santa Fe Springs, CA. The 38-acre waste facility includes a buried 42-million gallon, concrete-lined reservoir built in the 1920s and later used by the oil industry and others as a landfill. Areas around the reservoir were also used for unregulated disposal of a variety of liquid and solid wastes. Soils are contaminated with metals, polyaromatic hydrocarbons and volatile organic compounds.