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U.S. EPA REMOVES COALINGA MINE FROM SUPERFUND LIST

Release Date: 4/24/1998
Contact Information: Lois Grunwald, U.S. EPA, (415) 744-1588

    (San Francisco)--The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (U.S. EPA) today announced that it has deleted the Coalinga Asbestos Mine, Coalinga, Calif.  from the Superfund National Priorities List (NPL). The NPL is U.S. EPA's list of hazardous waste sites potentially posing the greatest long-term threat to public health and the environment.
 
     The decision follows findings by the U.S. EPA and the California Department of Toxic Substances Control that cleanup at the site is complete and that the site no longer poses a significant environmental or human health threat.

      Soil contaminated with asbestos and nickel was removed from a depot at a portion of the Coalinga site on Elm Street in 1992. The contaminated soil was secured in a pit with an impermeable cover.  Cleanup at the remainder of the site, located 16 miles from Coalinga on about 120 acres, involved dismantling a mill and disposing of the debris, constructing a stream diversion to divert water flows away from an asbestos mine tailings pile, grading the mine tailings to reduce the slope of the pile and improve its stability, and growing native vegetation on disturbed areas to reduce erosion. U.S. EPA will conduct reviews of the site periodically to ensure site integrity.

      The Coalinga Asbestos Mine was placed on the NPL in 1984. U.S. EPA identifies and ranks NPL sites according to threats to nearby populations through actual or potential contamination of groundwater, surface water or air. Sites deleted from the NPL remain eligible for cleanup actions in the unlikely event that conditions at the site change and warrant further actions.


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