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(Washington D.C.)- The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced today that it will formally add the Ten Mile Drain site in St. Clair Shores to the Superfund National Priorities List (NPL). Listing on the NPL triggers a comprehensive site investigation to track down the source of the PCB contamination and provides access to federal cleanup funding.
Commenting on EPA’s action to list the site on the Superfund National Priorities List, Rep. Levin said: "It is vital that we marshal additional federal efforts to locate the source of the PCBs and remove them once and for all,” said Rep. Levin. “I appreciate EPA’s past efforts to help the community address the PCB contamination in the Ten Mile Drain, and this is an important additional step.”
In 2002, extremely high levels of PCBs were discovered in the Ten Mile Drain system as well as two adjacent canals in St. Clair Shores, Michigan. Following the investigation and site assessment, EPA initiated a time-critical removal of the PCBs from the Drain and the canals, which was completed in 2004. Following that initial cleanup, additional testing revealed that PCBs continued to seep into the Ten Mile Drain. As an interim step, in 2006, EPA agreed to come back to St. Clair Shores to re-clean the Drain and install a liner the most seriously contaminated section of the Ten Mile Drain.
When high levels of PCBs were again detected in the Drain last fall, Rep. Sander Levin and Senators Carl Levin and Debbie Stabenow wrote to the Administrator of EPA Region 5 to urge EPA to mobilize an assessment and response team to investigate the source of the re contamination and take immediate steps to address the problem. At the lawmakers’ request, EPA returned to St. Clair Shores last March to perform additional PCB cleanup work in the Ten Mile Drain.
Rep. Levin wrote to the Administrator of EPA Region 5 last year in support of the State of Michigan’s nomination of the Ten Mile Drain site to the Superfund National Priorities List.
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