National Priorities List
Encyclopedia
Hazardous waste
A hazardous waste is waste that poses substantial or potential threats to public health or the environment. According to the U.S. environmental laws hazardous wastes fall into two major categories: characteristic wastes and listed wastes.Characteristic hazardous wastes are materials that are known...
sites in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
eligible for long-term remedial action (cleanup) financed under the federal Superfund
Superfund
Superfund is the common name for the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act of 1980 , a United States federal law designed to clean up sites contaminated with hazardous substances...
program. Environmental Protection Agency
United States Environmental Protection Agency
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is an agency of the federal government of the United States charged with protecting human health and the environment, by writing and enforcing regulations based on laws passed by Congress...
(EPA) regulations outline a formal process for assessing hazardous waste sites and placing them on the NPL. The NPL is intended primarily to guide EPA in determining which sites warrant further investigation.
The inclusion of a facility in the National Priorities List does not reflect a judgment of its owner or operator or make the owner or operator take any action. It also does not assign any liability to any person or company. It serves as a source of information by identifying facilities or other hazardous substance releases that appear to warrant remedial actions.
Process for listing waste sites
The Superfund law, formally known as the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act of 1980 (CERCLA), requires that the criteria provided by the Hazard Ranking SystemHazard Ranking System
The Hazard Ranking System is a scoring system used in the United States to evaluate potential relative risks to public health and the environment from releases or threatened releases of hazardous wastes at uncontrolled waste sites...
(HRS) be used to make a list of national priorities of the known releases or threatened releases of hazardous substances, pollutants, or contaminants in the United States. This list is Appendix B of the National Contingency Plan, known as the "National Priorities List."
Hazardous waste sites become eligible for Superfund cleanup when EPA receives a report of a potentially hazardous waste site from an individual, state government, or responsible federal agency. EPA will first enter the potentially contaminated facility into a database known as the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Information System (CERCLIS). Then, either EPA or the state in which the potentially contaminated facility is located will conduct a preliminary assessment, which decides if the facility poses a threat to human health and/or the environment. If the preliminary assessment shows the possibility of contamination, EPA (or the state under agreement with EPA) will conduct a more detailed site inspection. EPA then uses the HRS to review any available data on the site to determine whether it’s environmental or health risks are enough to qualify the facility for a Superfund
Superfund
Superfund is the common name for the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act of 1980 , a United States federal law designed to clean up sites contaminated with hazardous substances...
cleanup. Generally, facilities with overall scores of 28.50 and greater on the Hazardous Ranking System are eligible for the National Priorities List.
Another way facilities can be included in the National Priorities List is if a state or territory designates one top-priority site within its jurisdiction, regardless of the site's HRS score. The last way a site can be included in the NPL is if it meets the following three requirements:
- The Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease RegistryAgency for Toxic Substances and Disease RegistryThe Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry is a federal public health agency within the United States Department of Health and Human Services. The agency focuses on minimizing human health risks associated with exposure to hazardous substances...
has issued a health advisory that recommends removing people from the facility. - EPA determines that the site poses a significant threat to public health.
- EPA believes that it will be more cost-effective to use its remedial authority (which is only available at National Priorities List facilities) than to use its emergency removal authority in responding to the facility.
EPA may delete a final NPL site if it determines that no further response is required to protect human health or the environment. Also, sites where a remediation was completed through the Superfund
Superfund
Superfund is the common name for the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act of 1980 , a United States federal law designed to clean up sites contaminated with hazardous substances...
program are typically deleted from the list. As of July 31, 2010, there are 1,277 sites listed on the NPL. Since its inception in 1980, an additional 343 have been delisted, and 61 new sites are currently proposed.
Public comment process
The public has the opportunity to comment on facilities that are proposed to be added to the National Priorities List. EPA publishes notices in the Federal RegisterFederal Register
The Federal Register , abbreviated FR, or sometimes Fed. Reg.) is the official journal of the federal government of the United States that contains most routine publications and public notices of government agencies...
listing the proposed facilities. The agency will consider all comments received within 60 days after publication in the Register. The complete set of comments are available to the public one week following the close of the comment period. EPA makes a final listing of decisions after considering all the relevant comments that were received during the comment period.
EPA Superfund docket
The Superfund docket contains the Hazardous Ranking System score sheets for each proposed facility, a documentation record for each facility that details the information used to compute the score, information for any facility affected by particular statutory requirements or EPA listing policies, and a list of documents referenced in the documentation record.Mapping System
TOXMAPTOXMAP
TOXMAP is a geographic information system from the United States National Library of Medicine that uses maps of the United States to help users visually explore data from the United States Environmental Protection Agency's Toxics Release Inventory and Superfund programs...
is a geographic information system (GIS) from the Division of Specialized Information Services of the United States National Library of Medicine
United States National Library of Medicine
The United States National Library of Medicine , operated by the United States federal government, is the world's largest medical library. Located in Bethesda, Maryland, the NLM is a division of the National Institutes of Health...
(NLM) that uses maps of the United States to help users visually explore data from the EPA Superfund Basic Research Program
Superfund Basic Research Program
The Superfund Research Program was created within the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences in 1986 under the Superfund Amendments and Reauthorization Act...
and the Toxics Release Inventory
Toxics Release Inventory
The Toxics Release Inventory is a publicly available database containing information on toxic chemical releases and other waste management activities in the United States.-Summary of requirements:...
. TOXMAP's chemical and environmental health information is taken from NLM's Toxicology Data Network (TOXNET), PubMed
PubMed
PubMed is a free database accessing primarily the MEDLINE database of references and abstracts on life sciences and biomedical topics. The United States National Library of Medicine at the National Institutes of Health maintains the database as part of the Entrez information retrieval system...
, and from other authoritative sources.
External links
- National Priorities List - EPA
- Locate NPL sites where you live - EPA
- TOXMAP: Environmental Health e-map - National Library of Medicine