Dive Brief:
- Officials say that a shuttered landfill, the Lee Acres Superfund in San Juan County, New Mexico, is no longer considered hazardous. They are proposing it be removed from the list.
- Officials from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the New Mexico Environment Department, and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) along with representatives form the county and private contractors met to review preliminary findings conducted at the site.
- It was suggested by a project manager at the EPA that officials can start the process of removing the landfill from the National Priorities list. Ultimately, the decision is left to the state.
Dive Insight:
If the Lee Acres Superfund Site is removed form the National Priorities List, the land would not be cleared to be used until 2054 by members of the community. Superfund was created to hold polluters responsible for paying for cleaning up hazardous waste sites. A landfill in Niagara, New York was recently removed from the list as it no longer posed a risk to public health, but nine more sites were added to the Superfund list in December.
