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Utilities that polluted 10 acres on Philly’s waterfront to pay nearly $1 million for cleanup

The land and groundwater were contaminated as far back as the 1970s when Metal Bank of America used the site as a scrap and transformer salvage facility.

Billy Dufala, left, co-founder of RAIR (Recycled Artist In Residency), and John Wybar, right, owner of Revolution Recovery, stand on the Metal Bank Superfund Site in February 2018. Federal and state agencies have reached an agreement for utility companies that polluted the properties as far back as the 1970s to pay nearly $1 million Revolution Recovery did not cause the pollution, though it now owns the site.
Billy Dufala, left, co-founder of RAIR (Recycled Artist In Residency), and John Wybar, right, owner of Revolution Recovery, stand on the Metal Bank Superfund Site in February 2018. Federal and state agencies have reached an agreement for utility companies that polluted the properties as far back as the 1970s to pay nearly $1 million Revolution Recovery did not cause the pollution, though it now owns the site.Read moreDAVID MAIALETTI / Staff Photographer

Federal and Pennsylvania officials have reached an agreement with a dozen former polluters of the 10-acre Metal Bank Superfund site in Philadelphia’s Holmesburg section to pay nearly $1 million as part of a cleanup settlement.

Though the agreement was reached March 17, it does not go into effect until a 30-day public comment period closes in mid-April.

Under the agreement, the polluters, a collection of 12 utility companies, will pay $950,000 to reimburse the federal government for a cleanup of the site at 7301 Milnor St., along the Delaware River, and bordered by Cottman Avenue.

The land and groundwater were contaminated as far back as the 1970s when Metal Bank of America used the site as a scrap and transformer salvage facility. There, workers in the 1970s clawed open utility transformers to extract valuable copper. In the process, oil full of toxic PCBs oozed onto the ground, contaminated an area near an underground storage tank used to store transformer oil, and bled into the river.

The site was added to the Superfund list in 1983 and the EPA identified a list of utility companies responsible for the pollution.

The site is currently owned by Revolution Recovery, which did not cause the pollution. A representative for Revolution Recovery could not be reached Friday for comment.

» READ MORE: Would you buy a poisoned Superfund site? He just did

An EPA-prescribed cleanup entailed removing soil, disposal of the storage tank, and excavation of sediment in the Delaware River. A trench and six monitoring wells were installed, and portions of the site were capped.

After that, the EPA began monitoring the site, which is due to be reviewed again in 2023 to assess how well the cleanup has worked. Currently, parts of the site can’t be used for housing or agriculture, the groundwater cannot be used for drinking, and excavation of certain areas is prohibited so as to not disturb the water table or contaminated soils.

Of the total settlement, the utility companies will pay $414,807 to compensate several federal agencies for the cost, and the remaining $535,193 will be placed into the Department of the Interior’s Natural Resource Damage Assessment and Restoration Fund for future natural resource restoration projects.

The utilities include Consolidated Edison Co. of New York, Inc., Public Service Electric and Gas Co., Baltimore Gas and Electric Co., Jersey Central Power and Light Co., Long Island Lighting Co., Metropolitan Edison Co., Orange and Rockland Utilities, Inc., Peco Co., Potomac Electric Power Co., PPL Electric Utilities Corp., Virginia Electric and Power Co., and Delmarva Power & Light Co.