The Environmental Protection Agency announced on March 31 that it’s reached another settlement in the cleanup of the Casmalia Resources Superfund Site.
The settlement requires 337 companies that formerly used the site for hazardous waste disposal to pay $1.4 million toward the estimated $284 million it will cost to clean up the site.
In 1992, the EPA became the site’s lead regulatory agency after the facility’s owners and operators abandoned efforts to clean it up.
The now-defunct Casmalia Resources Superfund Site, which sits approximately 10 miles southwest of Santa Maria, accepted approximately 5.6 billion pounds of waste from nearly 10,000 generators between 1973 and 1989, according to the EPA.
Some of the 337 parties include Hershey Foods Corporation, IBM, FedEx, Target, Reno Newspapers Inc., and several government agencies including the Orcutt Unified School District and the city of Beverly Hills.
To date, the EPA has collected more than $116 million toward cleanup in nine other settlements, but details for the actual cleanup itself have yet to be worked out.
“Options for cleanup are being evaluated at this time, and there will be an opportunity to comment on a proposed remedy selection at a future date,” EPA Press Officer Nahal Mogharabi said in an email to the Sun.
A public comment period with the EPA regarding the settlement and cleanup is open until April 23. For more information, go to epa.gov/region9/casmalia.
This article appears in Apr 9-16, 2015.