North Penn Area 7 Site
North Wales, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania

Site Description

The 650-acre North Penn - Area 7 site in North Wales, Montgomery County, PA, encompasses five industrial facilities where solvents are used or were used in the past. Spra-Fin, Inc., operated a metal manufacturing and finishing business; the former Ford Electronics and Refrigeration Corp. manufactured electronics and electrical auto parts; Teleflex Inc. manufactured mechanical, electrical, and pneumatic control devices for the aircraft industry; the former Leeds and Northrup Inc. operated an electronic instruments manufacturing plant; and the former Zenith Electronic Corp. manufactured television picture tubes. The ground water and soils are contaminated with volatile organic compounds (VOCs) including trichloroethylene (TCE) and vinyl chloride (VC) from former process wastes. An estimated 91,000 people obtain drinking water from public and private wells within three miles of the Site. The public water supplies in the area come from ground water and from the Delaware River. The site was added to the National Priorities List (NPL) on March 31, 1989.

Current Site Status and Cleanup Actions to Date

• EPA has divided the work into three separate planned remedial actions, called operable units (OUs):
  • OU1 is a potentially responsible party (PRP) funded operable unit in the remedial investigation/feasibility study (RI/FS) stage and is addressing contaminated soils at four separate facilities on the Site.
  • OU 2 will focus on the Spra-Fin facility soil contamination. The design of the cleanup remedy was completed in September 2005. EPA is funding this work.
  • OU 3 is a Fund lead, site-wide ground water operable unit, also in the RI/FS stage. At the conclusion of the RI/FS, EPA expects to negotiate an enforcement document with viable PRPs to fund the cleanup worl.
• To date, PRPs have conducted an emergency removal and a non-time critical removal at the site, which included excavating (PDF) (2 pp, 530 K) approximately 6,300 cubic yards of contaminated materials.

Current Funding Status

• Previously, EPA obligated $4 million to this site.

For more information on the projects at this site, please read the North Penn Area 7 Fact Sheet on the Region 3 Superfund Web site.