Land to be taken off EPA list
By Jan TenBruggencate
Advertiser Science Writer
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is proposing to remove a large chunk of Del Monte Corp. pineapple land at Poamoho from its national Superfund list after finding no significant chemical contamination in the area.
Congress established the Superfund program in 1980 to find, investigate and clean up the worst chemical waste sites nationwide.
A larger region near Kunia would remain on the Superfund list for continued remediation of pesticide contamination from a 1977 tank spill outside Kunia Village. Some of the chemicals from that spill entered the shallow and deep groundwater under Kunia. The area's drinking water well was closed, and the village gets its water from another source.
EPA investigator Janet Rosati said the landowner of the Poamoho site, which lies north of Schofield Barracks, asked that the site be removed from the Superfund list after tests showed there was no threat from the land. She said soil was tested in several areas. At an old dump site, a team bored down through the debris and found no pesticide contamination in soils under the dump.
"We are pleased to announce that we found contamination levels far below our stringent health-based guidelines," said Keith Takata, EPA director for the Superfund program in the Pacific Southwest Region.
The EPA has opened a 30-day public comment period on the proposed partial removal of land from
Del Monte's Superfund site that ends Dec. 1. Comments may be sent to Rosati at: U.S. EPA (SFD-8-2), 75 Hawthorne St., San Francisco, CA 94105, or e-mail rosati.janet@epa.gov.
The EPA and Del Monte have launched the design and construction phase of the cleanup of the Kunia Village site. The plan has several parts, including an existing remediation site, new monitoring wells in deep groundwater, an air stripping and carbon filtration facility for treating deep water, a soil vapor extraction system for contaminated shallow soils, and an earth and vegetative cap over the contamination area.
Reach Jan TenBruggencate at jant@honoluluadvertiser.com or (808) 245-3074.
