PHILADELPHIA (Aug. 23, 2022) – The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced today that it has deleted a portion of the Tybouts Corner Landfill site in New Castle, Delaware, from the Superfund National Priorities List (NPL). The NPL is a list of the nation’s most contaminated hazardous waste sites.

“While EPA encourages site reuse throughout the cleanup process, even partial deletions from the NPL can revitalize communities, raise property values, and promote economic growth by signaling to potential developers and financial institutions that cleanup of a portion of a site is complete,” said EPA Mid-Atlantic Regional Administrator Adam Ortiz.  “Achieving this milestone can be especially impactful for communities.”

EPA deletes sites or parts of sites from the NPL when no further cleanup is required to protect human health or the environment. Years, and sometimes decades, of complex investigation and cleanup work have gone into getting these sites to the point where they can be deleted from the NPL.

President Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law will accelerate EPA’s work to help communities clean up these contaminated sites with a $3.5 billion investment in the Superfund Remedial Program and reinstates the Superfund chemical excise taxes, making it one of the largest investments in American history to address legacy pollution.

This historic investment strengthens EPA’s ability to tackle threats to human health and the environment, and EPA has already set action in motion to clear the backlog of the 49 contaminated sites which had been awaiting funding to start remedial action.

The Tybouts Corner Landfill Site is approximately 10 miles south of Wilmington and four miles west of the Delaware River. The site was used by the New Castle County Department of Public Works as a municipal sanitary landfill which accepted industrial wastes from December 1968 until July 1971. The landfill consisted of two non-adjoined sections – West Landfill, about four acres in size, and the Main Landfill, with about 47 acres, containing waste ranging from five to 40 feet thick. Contamination was found in two nearby wells in 1976 and again in 1983.  EPA’s clean-up on two parcels of Tybouts Corner on the West Landfill is now considered complete, which included removal of all waste, as well as soil and groundwater remediation.

While significant progress has been made in the clean-up of the Main Landfill portion of the Tybouts Corner site, all performance standards have not yet been achieved and it will remain on the NPL. 

To keep the public informed of these actions, EPA published a Federal Register Notice on March 22, proposing to delete part the Tybouts Corner Landfill site and opening a 60-day comment period, of which no adverse comments were received.