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The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has removed the Butler Mine Tunnel in Pittston Township from its list of the nation’s most contaminated hazardous waste sites, the agency announced Tuesday.
Sites are deleted from the Superfund National Priorities List, or NPL, when no further cleanup is required to protect human health or the environment, its release said.
“Deleting sites from the NPL is a major milestone for Superfund impacted communities,” EPA Mid-Atlantic Acting Regional Administrator Diana Esher said in the release.
The Butler Mine Tunnel was built along the Susquehanna River in the 1930s as a collection and discharge point for mine drainage from a 5-square-mile area of underground coal mines, said prior published reports.
It was placed on EPA’s Superfund list in 1987 due to the illegal disposal of oily waste into abandoned underground coal mines during the late 1970s, the EPA said.
The oil waste discharged from the mines into the Susquehanna River through the Butler Mine Tunnel in 1979 and again in 1985 following heavy rains associated with Hurricane Gloria, the EPA said.
“Based on monitoring data collected, further oil flush outs associated with the original disposal activities are not expected,” the EPA said. “The EPA response at the Butler Mine Tunnel is now complete and as a result, the site has been deleted from the NPL.”
No significant adverse comments were submitted to the EPA during a 30-day public comment period following the EPA’s May 14 Federal Register Notice proposing to deletion of the Butler Mine tunnel site from the NPL, it said.
The EPA required the companies responsible for the previous incidents to construct a containment/collection system that could be deployed in future river contamination threats, prior published reports said. The federal agency also mandated construction of a system to monitor tunnel flows and severe weather patterns that could impact flow levels.
In its Tuesday release, the federal agency said its response to the discharges included establishing an administrative center to monitor the site, providing construction and equipment for flush-outs, closing boreholes, developing an operations/maintenance plan and encouraging more responsible waste disposal through a community education program.
Reach Jennifer Learn-Andes at 570-991-6388 or on Twitter @TLJenLearnAndes.