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Dow La Porte Facility Achieves Environmental Indicators Landmark

Release Date: 5/4/2004
Contact Information: For more information contact the Office of External Affairs at (214) 665-2200.

      Today at a ceremony in La Porte, Texas, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recognized the Dow Chemical Company's La Porte facility as the 1000th facility to achieve both of EPA's environmental indicators under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) corrective action program.

      EPA Assistant Administrator for Solid Waste and Emergency Response Marianne Horinko said, "Dow joins a list of American corporations which have made a real commitment to measuring the nation's environmental progress.  With companies like Dow, we will reach the national RCRA corrective action program goal for 2005: human exposures controlled at 95 percent of our high priority facilities and migration of contaminated groundwater under control at 70 percent of our highest priority facilities."  

      The indicators -- current human exposure under control and migration of contaminated groundwater under control -- are measurements that track environmental conditions.  They measure realistic, achievable cleanup goals that are protective of human health and the environment based on the current conditions and property use. To date, 74 percent of the priority facilities have achieved a "yes" for human exposures and 63 percent have achieved a "yes" for the groundwater environmental indicator.

      The Dow La Porte facility is an integrated chemical manufacturing facility which produces plastics, synthetic resins and industrial organic chemicals such as phosgene.  It has a compliance plan in place to ensure that no off-site human exposures are occurring and on-site exposures are adequately addressed through on-site worker health and safety programs.

      Dow has plumes of ground water contaminated with chlorobenzene and aniline, among other contaminants.  Ground water recovery efforts ongoing since 1989 have reduced both the size and concentrations of the contaminants in the ground water plumes.

      More information about EPA's Environmental Indicators initiative is available at https://www.epa.gov/correctiveaction/eis.htm.