[Federal Register Volume 64, Number 157 (Monday, August 16, 1999)]
[Proposed Rules]
[Pages 44452-44454]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: 99-21010]


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ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY

40 CFR Part 300

[FRL-6420-9]


National Oil and Hazardous Substance Pollution Contingency Plan; 
National Priorities List

AGENCY: Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

ACTION: Notice of intent to delete the Darling Hill Dump site from the 
National Priorities List; request for comments.

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SUMMARY: The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Region I announces 
its intent to delete the Darling Hill Dump Site from the National 
Priorities List (NPL) and requests public comment on this action. The 
NPL constitutes appendix B of 40 CFR part 300 which is the National Oil 
and Hazardous Substance Pollution Contingency Plan (NCP), which EPA 
promulgated pursuant to section 105 of the Comprehensive Environmental 
Response, Compensation, and Liability Act, (CERCLA) as amended by the 
Superfund Amendments and Reauthorization Act. After consultation with 
the State of Vermont, EPA has determined that the responsible parties 
have implemented all appropriate response actions required.

DATES: Comments concerning this site must be submitted on or before 
September 15, 1999.

ADDRESSES: Comments may be mailed to: William Lovely, Remedial Project 
Manager, U.S. EPA Region I , 1 Congress Street, Suite 1100 (HBT), 
Boston, MA 02114-2023.
    Comprehensive information on this site is available through the EPA 
Region I public records center, which is located at EPA's Region I 
office and is available for viewing by appointment only Monday through 
Friday, excluding holidays. Requests for appointments or copies of the 
contents from the Regional records should be directed to the EPA Region 
I Records Center.

[[Page 44453]]

    The address for the Region I Records Center is: EPA Records Center, 
1 Congress Street, Boston, MA 02114-2023, (617) 918-1440.
    A copy of the public records is also available for viewing at the 
Darling Hill Dump Site information repository at: Town Hall, Town of 
Lyndon, 24 Main St., Lyndonville, VT 05851.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: William Lovely, Remedial Project 
Manager, U.S. EPA Region I, 1 Congress St., Suite 1100 (HBT), Boston, 
MA 02114-2023, (617) 918-1240.

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:

Table of Contents

I. Introduction
II. NPL Deletion Criteria
III. Deletion Procedures
IV. Basis for Intended Site Deletion

I. Introduction

    The Environmental Protection Agency, Region I announces its intent 
to delete the Darling Hill Dump, Lyndon, Vermont, from the National 
Priorities List (NPL) which constitutes appendix B of the NCP (40 CFR 
part 300), and requests public comment on this deletion. EPA identifies 
sites that appear to present a significant risk to public health, 
welfare, or the environment and maintains the NPL as the list of these 
sites. Sites on the NPL may be the subject of remedial actions financed 
by the Hazardous Substance Superfund Response Trust Fund (Fund). 
Pursuant to Sec. 300.425(e)(3) of the NCP, any site deleted from the 
NPL remains eligible for Fund-financed remedial actions if conditions 
at the site warrant such action.
    EPA will accept comments concerning this proposal for thirty (30) 
days after publication of this document in the Federal Register.

II. NPL Deletion Criteria

    The NCP establishes the criteria that the Agency uses to delete 
sites from the NPL. In accordance with 40 CFR 300.425(e)(1) of the NCP, 
sites may be deleted from or recategorized on the NPL where no further 
response is appropriate. In making a determination to delete a site 
from the NPL, EPA shall consider, in consultation with the State, 
whether any of the following criteria have been met:
    (i) Responsible parties or other persons have implemented all 
appropriate response actions required;
    (ii) All appropriate Fund-financed responses under CERCLA have been 
implemented, and no further response actions by responsible parties are 
appropriate; or
    (iii) The remedial investigation has shown that the release poses 
no significant threat to public health or the environment and, 
therefore, taking of remedial measures is not appropriate.
    Deletion of a site from the NPL does not preclude eligibility for 
subsequent Fund-financed actions if future site conditions warrant such 
action. Section 300.425(e)(3) of the NCP states that Fund-financed 
actions may be taken at sites that have been deleted from the NPL.

III. Deletion Procedures

    In the NPL rulemaking published on October 15, 1984 (49 FR 40320), 
the Agency solicited and received comments on whether the notice of 
comment procedures followed for adding sites to the NPL also should be 
used before the sites are deleted. Comments also were received in 
response to the amendments to the NCP proposed on February 12, 1985 (50 
FR 5862). Formal notice and comment procedures for delisting sites from 
the NPL were subsequently added as part of the March 8, 1990 amendments 
to the NCP (55 FR 8666 and 8846). Those procedures are set out in 
Sec. 300.425(e)(4) of the NCP. Deletion of sites from the NPL does not 
itself create, alter, or revoke any individual's rights or obligations. 
The NPL is designed primarily for informational purposes and to assist 
Agency management.
    Upon determination that at least one of the criteria described in 
Sec. 300.425(e)(1) has been met, EPA may formally begin the deletion 
process. The following procedures were used for the intended deletion 
of this site:
    (1) EPA Region I issued a Record of Decision which documented that 
no further CERCLA action is required at the Darling Hill Dump Site.
    (2) EPA Region I has recommended deletion and prepared the relevant 
documents.
    (3) The State of Vermont has concurred with EPA's decision to 
delete. The State has not made the determinations which underlie the 
decision to delete.
    (4) Concurrent with this National Notice of Intent to Delete, a 
local notice has been published in local newspapers and has been 
distributed to appropriate federal, state and local officials and other 
interested parties.
    (5) The Region has made all relevant documents available in the 
Regional Office and the local site information repository.
    These procedures have been completed for the Darling Hill Dump 
Site. This Federal Register document, and a concurrent notice in the 
local newspaper in the vicinity of the site, announces the initiation 
of a 30-day public comment period and the availability of the Notice of 
Intent to Delete. The public is asked to comment on EPA's intention to 
delete the site from the NPL; all critical documents needed to evaluate 
EPA's decision are included in the information repository and deletion 
docket.
    Upon completion of the 30-day public comment period, the EPA 
Regional Office (Region I) will evaluate the comments before the final 
decision to delete. The Region will prepare a Responsiveness Summary, 
which will address comments received during the public comment period. 
The responsiveness summary will be made available to the public at the 
information repository. Members of the public are welcome to contact 
the EPA Regional Office to obtain a copy of the responsiveness summary, 
when available. If EPA still determines that deletion from the NPL is 
appropriate, after receiving public comments, a final notice of 
deletion will be published in the Federal Register. However, it is not 
until a final notice of deletion is published in the Federal Register 
that the site would be actually deleted.

IV. Basis for Intended Site Deletion

    The following summary provides the Agency's rationale for delisting 
the Darling Hill Dump site from the NPL.
    The Darling Hill Dump is an inactive solid waste disposal facility 
located near the Village of Lyndonville, Vermont, within the Town of 
Lyndon, in Caledonia County, in the northeast part of Vermont. The 3.5 
acre site is located on the top of the north-facing slope of Darling 
Hill which is bounded to the east and south by Darling Hill Road. The 
land east of Darling Hill Road slopes steeply downward to the east 
branch of the Passumpsic River. West of the Darling Hill Dump is a 
woodland area which slopes steeply down to the west branch of the 
Passumpsic River.
    The Darling Hill Dump operated as a municipal and industrial waste 
disposal facility from 1952 though 1983. Routine testing by the State 
of Vermont in 1982 revealed the presence of low level, volatile organic 
compounds (VOC) in the Village of Lyndonville's Municipal Wellfield. 
Given the wellfield's close proximity to the Site (0.5 mile), the State 
of Vermont completed a Preliminary Assessment (PA) and Site Inspection 
(SI) of the dump in 1985 to determine whether or not it was the source 
of contamination. The SI report concluded that the dump was a possible 
source of contamination at the municipal well field and recommended 
further study. EPA subsequently performed an Expanded Site Inspection

[[Page 44454]]

(ESI) of the Darling Hill Dump from 1986 to1989 and concluded that it 
was the most likely source of contamination. As a result of this 
conclusion, the Darling Hill Dump was proposed to the NPL in June 1988 
and promulgated on October 4, 1989.
    Following the addition of the Darling Hill Dump to the NPL, the 
potentially responsible parties (PRPs) for the site contamination 
signed two Administrative Orders by Consent in 1989 that required them 
to: (1) Perform a Remedial Investigation and Feasibility Study under 
EPA oversight and; (2) install a carbon filtration system at the 
municipal well field. The purpose of the remedial investigation was to 
delineate the nature and extent of contamination in all media (i.e. 
air, soil, surface water, groundwater and sediment) throughout the Site 
and determine whether such contamination posed a threat to human health 
and the environment. Installation of the carbon filtration system would 
prevent ingestion of the low levels of contamination previously 
identified.
    In January 1992, EPA published a fact sheet which summarized the 
findings of the RI/FS. Although the RI/FS found low levels of 
contamination in both soil and groundwater, a Baseline Risk Assessment 
concluded that contamination from the Darling Hill Dump does not pose 
an unacceptable risk to human health or the environment. Moreover, 
installation of the carbon filter in the municipal water supply helps 
to ensure that the groundwater at the municipal well field remains 
within Federal drinking water standards. The Village of Lyndonville is 
responsible for monitoring the carbon filtration system and municipal 
well field.
    Based on the results of the RI/FS, a Proposed Plan recommending No 
Action was released for thirty (30) day public comment period. 
Following the public comment period, a Record of Decision (ROD) for the 
Site was signed on June 30, 1992. The ROD documented the decision that 
no further CERCLA action was necessary at the Darling Hill Dump. As 
such, the statutory requirements of CERCLA section 121 for remedial 
actions are not applicable and no five year review is required. 
However, to ensure the long term effectiveness of the initial actions, 
EPA and the PRPs entered into an Administrative Order by Consent which 
required a minimum of five years of post-ROD monitoring. This 
monitoring concluded in 1997 since the analytical results supported the 
earlier decision that no further CERCLA actions were necessary.
    One of the three criteria for deletion specifies that EPA may 
delete a site from the NPL if ``Responsible parties or other persons 
have implemented all appropriate response actions required.'' EPA, with 
concurrence from the State of Vermont, believes that this criterion for 
deletion has been met. As a result, EPA is proposing deletion of this 
Site from the NPL. Documents supporting this action are available from 
the public records center.

    Dated: July 29, 1999.
Donald Berger,
Acting Director, Office of Site Remediation and Restoration, Region I.
[FR Doc. 99-21010 Filed 8-13-99; 8:45 am]
BILLING CODE 6560-50-P