All News Releases By Date

EPA, DOJ reach $1.6 million settlement on Troy, Ohio, Superfund cleanup

Release Date: 02/18/2009
Contact Information: Mick Hans, 312-353-5050, [email protected]

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
No. 09-OPA021

CHICAGO (Feb. 18, 2009) - U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Region 5 and U.S. Department of Justice announce a $1,609,732 settlement with Livingston and Co., Inc., a business responsible for contributing hazardous waste to the United Scrap Lead Superfund site near Troy, Ohio. As part of the same settlement, Livingston will also pay $290,268 to a larger "respondent group" of other responsible parties that performed cleanup work at the site. The consent decree was entered with the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio in Dayton. Government agencies and the respondent group have spent nearly $19 million to address the site.

United Scrap Lead operated from 1948 to 1980 at a 25-acre site about one mile south of Troy on County Road 25-A in Concord Township, Miami County. The business reclaimed materials from automotive batteries but left lead and battery acid in an 8-acre disposal area on the property. Livingston and Co., a scrap metal business, sent scrap batteries to United Scrap Lead.

The site was added to the Superfund National Priorities List in 1984. EPA and Ohio EPA supervised a series of cleanup activities at the site from 1985 to 1999, with the most extensive work beginning in 1997. In total, about 62,000 cubic yards of battery casing debris was excavated, treated and shipped off-site for proper disposal. About 11,500 cubic yards of soil were excavated, treated and left at the site. About 3,000 cubic yards of the excavated soils did not require chemical or stabilization treatment and were used as clean backfill on the site.

EPA has conducted two required five-year reviews of site conditions since 1999. These reviews confirmed that the cleanup currently protects residents near the site. EPA is in the process of establishing institutional controls to limit future uses of the property in the event it is sold or redeveloped. The agency plans to work with a receiver newly appointed by the court to finalize these controls and market the property to a new owner.