The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has added two Massachusetts sites to the National Priorities List of Superfund Sites.
The former Walton & Lonsbury Inc. facility in Attleboro and the former Creese & Cook Tannery in Danvers have been added to the list.
The former Walton & Lonsbury site housed a chrome plating facility and operated from 1940 to 2007. The former Creese & Cook Tannery property was a leather tanning and finishing operation from 1903 until 1981 when the company went bankrupt.
Superfund is the federal program that investigates and cleans up the most complex, uncontrolled or abandoned hazardous waste sites in the country. Since 1983, EPA has listed 1,685 sites.
The next steps for the Massachusetts sites, as with all National Priorities List sites, is for EPA to identify companies or people responsible for the contamination and require them to conduct or pay for the cleanup.
For the newly listed sites without viable potentially responsible parties, EPA will investigate the full extent of the contamination before starting significant cleanup at the site. Therefore, it may be several years before significant EPA clean up funding is required for these sites.
"Adding these two sites to the national Superfund list allows EPA to begin addressing contamination issues on these parcels. Superfund has been very effective cleaning contaminated lands across the country, ensuring cleaner and healthier communities," Curt Spalding, regional administrator of EPA’s New England office, said in a statement.
