Alaska Weighs Alternative To NPL Designation For Abandoned Mine Site

摘要

Alaska's attorney general is tentatively exploring negotiating an enforceable alternative Superfund agreement with the Interior Department's Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to push BLM to clean up an abandoned mine in Alaska instead of pursuing the state's recent urgent request to have the site placed on the Superfund National Priorities List (NPL), following a suggestion from EPA's waste chief. Alaska officials appear to be upping the pressure on BLM to get the abandoned Red Devil cinnabar mine in southwestern Alaska cleaned up. The former mine, which provided ore for mercury production, is on BLM property and has been on EPA and the Department of Interior's (DOI) radar for cleanup since the 1980s. The site is one of many former mines, now abandoned, that operated on DOI or other federal land management agency land. But these sites fall under cleanup programs that are in their infancy stages and have gotten little funding compared to contaminated sites on land owned by the Defense and Energy departments.