How many Superfund sites are in Lancaster County?

The federal Superfund program is meant to tackle the nation's most heavily contaminated sites. But under the Trump administration, these clean-up projects have been piling up without funding, the Associated Press reported.

The backlog of unfunded projects is the largest it's been in 15 years and nearly triple the number that were stalled under the Obama administration, according to Environmental Protection Agency numbers.

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Berkley Products Co. dump site

- Where: Denver.

- When: It became a Superfund site in 1989.

- Point in cleanup process: This site will undergo a five-year review in 2020, and the EPA still tests residential wells. It has undergone all remedial actions since it became a Superfund site in 1989.

- Why a site: It was formerly used as a privately owned landfill that burned and buried municipal and industrial wastes from 1930 to 1965 and later used by Lipton Paint and Varnish Co. to bury municipal waste, paint waste, organic solvents, resins and pigment sludge until 1970.

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Elizabethtown Landfill

- Where: Elizabethtown.

- When: 1989.

- Point in cleanup process: The site has undergone several five-year reviews to confirm the remedies in place protect public health and environment, and a final groundwater remedy will need to be implemented in the future. Its next review is scheduled for 2023.

- Why a site: The former quarrying site was used to operate an unlicensed landfill from at least 1959 through 1973, accepting municipal, household and industrial wastes. It was then used as a trash-hauling location, where an EPA contractor in 1985 found leachate, a possible hazardous waste, in samples near the landfill.

Was Lancaster County Central Park once a landfill? Why do gas prices vary city to city? [We the People]

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UGI Columbia gas plant

- Where: Columbia.

- When: 1994.

- Point in cleanup process: The site is sampled annually since excavation of contaminated soils took place in 2006-07. Its next five-year review is in 2021.

- Why a site: A former gas manufacturing site, overflows from a tar separator were released into an open ditch that led to the Susquehanna River, causing local fishermen to complain to the plant “that their boats were being covered with tar.”

Crédito: GILLIAN McGOLDRICK | Staff Writer