July 14, 2022: A ‘Superfund’ listing request — to potentially unlock millions of dollars in federal funding to support clean-up activities at the former Exide Technologies recycling facility in Vernon — was issued by the California Environmental Protection Agency (CalEPA) on July 1.
CalEPA is calling for the site and its surroundings to be added to US Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) ‘National Priorities List’, which is also known as the Superfund.
California governor Gavin Newsom said the move was designed to “aggressively pursue federal funds” available under the Biden administration’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, which was passed by Congress earlier this year. This provides $1.5 billion to revitalize brownfields across the US plus additional funds to protect human health and the environment.
CalEPA secretary Jared Blumenfeld said: “Vernon is one of the most contaminated lead sites in the country. A Superfund listing would bring federal resources and expertise to the table that have frankly been missing for too long.”
California has allocated $700 million for the facility and residential clean-up to date and has remediated nearly 4,000 properties, CalEPA said.
‘Unknown costs’
Work by California’s Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC) at the former Exide site is scheduled to continue until the autumn of 2025, at which point 6,000 properties and additional facilities will have been cleaned up.
However, the DTSC estimates completion will cost an additional $150 million, for which there is no funding in place, CalEPA said.
Meanwhile, industrial properties surrounding the facility have yet to be investigated and their clean-up costs are unknown, the agency said.
The Vernon site, five miles south of downtown Los Angeles, has been shuttered since 2014. It had been operated by Exide as a lead battery recycling and smelting facility for almost a century, producing around 110,000 tonnes of lead a year.
The DTSC said this January that it had hit its target of removing the soil from 3,200 properties in the area around the old Exide facility by the end of 2021.
Image: US EPA
