Superfund Sites: How the Environmental Protection Agency Cleans Up Waste

Superfund Sites: How the Environmental Protection Agency Cleans Up Waste

This article relates to Murderland

In her book Murderland, Caroline Fraser examines the lead-crime hypothesis, the theory that children exposed to high levels of lead have neurological changes that lead to increased aggressiveness in adulthood. Ted Bundy serves as Fraser's example of a child exposed to high levels of lead who proceeded to live a life of very violent crime. His exposure was largely due to environmental contamination from the Bunker Hill Mining and Metallurgical Complex.

Located in Smelterville, Idaho, the Bunker Hill Company began lead and silver mining operations at the end of the nineteenth century and continued for almost a hundred years, dumping tons of waste containing lead and other heavy metals into the air, soil, and waterways. In the 1970s and 80s, several families in the region brought lawsuits against the company when tests showed that their children had blood lead levels far above 30 µg/dL, the level considered harmful by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The plant closed for economic reasons in 1981, and by 1983, the site had been identified as a candidate for a cleanup process as part of the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA), informally called "Superfund."

In the late 1970s, sites like Love Canal in New York and the Valley of the Drums in Kentucky became infamous as toxic waste dump sites. In response, Congress established CERCLA in 1980, which granted the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) the power to clean up contaminated sites across the country and charge the responsible parties for the cost. If no responsible parties could be identified, a trust funded by a CERCLA-created tax on chemical and petroleum industries would be used. Within five years, 1.6 billion dollars had been collected for this "superfund."

The cleanup of a Superfund site is a complex process. First there is an initial assessment, at which point the site is placed on a prioritized list. Then the EPA must evaluate the nature and extent of contamination and the threat to human health and the environment. Once all the data are in hand, the EPA works with state, local, and other federal agencies to create a plan for removing contaminants, monitoring the site for continued contamination, and enforcing long-term restrictions before the site can be considered cleaned. If possible and safe, the EPA attempts to return the site to productivity in some way, like as a pollinator habitat, recreational area, community infrastructure, or an energy production site.

In the case of the Bunker Hill site, there were several environmentally concerning factors that led to its placement on the Superfund list, including the accumulation of lead in soil, hazardous waste in a storage pond, and other heavy metal contamination. The site spans 1,500 square miles and 166 river miles, making it one of the nation's largest and most complex Superfund sites. Cleanup efforts have been ongoing since 1994 and have included remediation of over 7,000 yards, parks, and commercial properties, the cleanup of mine waste, and an upgrade to the groundwater collection system.

These efforts have had a noticeable effect: between the closure of Bunker Hill, the cleanup, and the decline of leaded gasoline, blood lead levels in local children have decreased to below 5 µg/dL, which was the CDC's acceptable level until 2021, although now, the CDC's acceptable level is 3.5 µg/dL, which has still not been achieved. The current levels of contamination overall still present a risk to public health and the environment, and the EPA and its local partners expect complete cleanup to take decades. The Bunker Hill Mining and Metallurgical Complex has detrimentally impacted the Pacific Northwest for over a century, and although the actions of the EPA and Superfund have helped clean up the company's pollution, substantial work is still required to restore the area to a state that is truly protective of human health and the environment.

Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and the Environmental Protection Agency.

Filed under Nature and the Environment

This article relates to Murderland. It first ran in the June 18, 2025 issue of BookBrowse Recommends.