Gov. Bill Lee is proposing $40 million this year to clean up some of Tennessee’s Superfund sites, which are former facilities, dumps or mines that have leached dangerous levels of contamination into the environment.
Tennessee has 29 Superfund sites — that produced everything from air conditioners to uranium used in the first atomic bomb — and 18 of them are on the Environmental Protection Agency’s National Priority List.
Sites can impact air, water and soil miles away, so cleanups can be quite complex. A single site can require years, or even decades, of remedial actions and cost millions of dollars.
‘It’s a one-shot pot’
The Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation oversees these cleanups, but the agency has historically been limited by inadequate funding, according to Steve Sanders, TDEC’s director of remediation.
“I probably can’t really convey the amount of excitement we have, because this is a great opportunity to truly impact many communities across the state in a way that we financially could not do in previous years,” Sanders said.
The proposed state budget recommends $10 million for Superfund sites on the EPA’s National Priority List, $30 million for other Superfund sites and $9 million for orphaned landfills, which are landfills that don’t have a viable owner or responsible party. While a small piece of the nearly $53 billion budget, it represents the largest single investment in Superfund sites in Tennessee’s history, according to Sanders.
“It is a one-shot pot of money that we can really have thoughtful and pragmatic approaches to how we spend it and address some of the worst sites that have, in many cases, been sitting inactive for years and years,” he said.
Transforming toxic dumps to healthy green spaces
This movement is happening now because the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law designated $3.5 billion for Superfund site cleanups as part of a larger federal effort to address what’s called legacy pollution, or pollution that persists in the environment long after its introduction.
In December, the EPA announced that $1 billion of these funds would be used to clean up 49 unfunded Superfunds, including three sites in Tennessee. There is a former metal manufacturing plant in Collierville, a site that housed agricultural chemicals and aluminum smelting operations in Knoxville and a former dry cleaner, called Custom Cleaners, in Memphis.
The EPA listed Custom Cleaners on the National Priority List in 2017 due to soil, indoor air and groundwater contamination, which is likely harming the Memphis Sand Aquifer, an underground water source.
“That actually directly impacts the drinking water for thousands of people in the Memphis area,” said Scott Banbury, a lobbyist for the Tennessee Chapter of the Sierra Club. “We’ve got to protect that resource.”
The state has not selected other Superfund sites yet. The data at many of the sites is outdated, Sanders said, so the first step will be determining the scope of the pollution. Then TDEC will try to stop it with the best available technology, which varies depending on the affected source.
If drinking water is degraded, for example, the state might install a pump and treat system or inject microbes to break down contaminants in the water.
Eventually, the sites should be safe enough for redevelopment or conversion into a green space, Sanders said, so the economic value of properties will also be considered when selecting sites.
The final step is monitoring.
Congress established the Superfund law, officially called the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act, in 1980, and new sites are still being identified today. In the fall, EPA proposed expanding the National Priority List with a former Tennessee factory in Cordova that produced flares, grenades and bombs for the U.S. military.
Superfund sites have disproportionately affected minority communities. One in four Black and Hispanic Americans live within 3 miles of a Superfund, according to the EPA.
On Air - 90.3 WPLN-FM