Federal Facilities Restoration and Reuse Office Project Successes
EPA's Federal Facilities Restoration and Reuse Office (FFRRO) Federal Facilities Site Evaluation Project (FFSEP) focuses on 514 sites that were identified based on a review of the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Information System (CERCLIS) database and most are also on the Federal Agency Hazardous Waste Compliance Docket (Docket). The CERCLIS database contains a list of all properties, both Federal and private, at which there has been a known or potential release of contamination or pollution. The Docket contains a list of federally owned or operated sites that manage hazardous waste or from which a release, or there is a potential for the release, of contamination or pollution. EPA publishes and updates the Docket based on reports by federal facilities of certain hazardous substances or waste activities.
The 514 FFSEP sites were of an unknown disposition when the project was initiated at the beginning of Fiscal Year 2010. In many cases EPA records regarding these sites were incomplete or missing. It was not clear from the records whether sites had been fully assessed with regard to whether they should be evaluated for inclusion on the National Priorities List (NPL), whether they were being cleaned up under another cleanup authority, or whether they did not warrant further action under CERCLA.
As part of the effort to determine actual status, EPA reached out to our Federal partners and State agencies to gather the most recent information on the FFSEP sites. EPA reviewed information on these sites and the status of the majority of the sites on the list has now been established. In fact, EPA had been able to establish status determinations for 95% of the 514 sites originally thought to be stalled. This web site reflects EPA's efforts to provide information regarding the status of these sites.
EPA Regional Offices also looked at sites not on the list but where increased EPA involvement might accelerate cleanup. This effort led to EPA evaluating a number of sites for possible proposal to the NPL as well as EPA being able to remove previously proposed sites where remediation activities under another authority have been successful.
One such site is Arnold Engineering Development Center (AEDC) in Coffee and Franklin Counties, Tennessee. In 1994, the EPA proposed placing the AEDC on the NPL, due primarily to a release of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) to the Woods Reservoir. However, the EPA received a letter from the Tennessee Department of Environment & Conservation (TDEC) requesting that the site not be finalized on the NPL, and that cleanup activities continue under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) corrective action authority. EPA never finalized the site on the NPL, and, in fact, deproposed the site from the NPL in March 2012 because the site is being addressed under the RCRA corrective action program.