Several steps need to be taken before actual cleanup begins around two Missouri superfund waste sites that were included in a $1 billion funding package approved by Congress last year, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021, according to Environmental Protection Agency (EPA ).
The Valley Park TCE Site in Valley Park and the Vienna Wells Site in Vienna are the two sites targeted for cleanup.
“These two sites are within the category of what we call fund lead sites, which means the cleanups are paid through funds appropriated to the EPA,” said Hoai Tran, superfund remedial project manager for the two Missouri sites. “They then go through a priority panel process where eligible sites that are ready to be cleaned up are evaluated. The priority panel makes a decision on which sites get funded on a national basis. Both of these sites were presented to the priority panel.”
The cost for cleaning up Valley Park TCE and Vienna Wells are $1,368,000 and $19,593,000, respectively, according to EPA data. The Missouri Department of Natural Resources is the support agency for both sites.
“Obviously things are subject to change as milestones are completed but after the contractor is selected, which will be some time in the late summer, the contractor submits project plans that take several months to be approved,” Tran told the St. Louis Record. “The hope is that we'll be on site doing initial site mobilization sometime probably in the spring of 2023.”
The allocated money will be used for soil remedy so that TCE contamination will no longer occur at the groundwater aquifer at Valley Park and so that PCE contamination will no longer impact the drinking water supply at Vienna.
“Neither one of these sites requires relocation of residents,” Tran said. “Relocation is evaluated as part of our risk assessment process and it was determined that we could safely implement the remedy without impacting the residences in a way that won’t expose them to contamination.”
The contractor is unknown at this time but the EPA will eventually select one primary contractor for each site to complete the cleanup.
About 60% of the sites receiving funding for new cleanup projects are in historically black and brown communities, according to EPA data.