EPA to brief residents on site's Superfund designation

WILLISTON, Vt. --Residents will have a chance on Wednesday to question Environmental Protection Agency officials about how they will use the federal Superfund law to clean up a hazardous waste site.

The site at the end of Commerce Street, a dead-end street west of Taft Corners, became the 10th location in Vermont on the federal government's list of Superfund hazardous waste sites in April.

The site was home to Mitec Systems Corp., a manufacturer of microwave parts, from 1979 to 1984. Ten years later, contaminated water was found underground that was flowing south to the nearby Muddy Brook.

Karen Lumino, a remedial project manager at the EPA, said Wednesday's meeting, set for 7 p.m. at Williston Town Hall, is intended to introduce the EPA team members who will be working on the project and to answer residents' questions.

Lumino said the EPA is working to find people responsible for the pollution.

"We are identifying potentially responsible parties," she said. Federal officials have said cleanup likely won't begin for five to seven years.

The EPA wants to make the party responsible for the contamination responsible for the cleanup, Lumino said.

Superfund is a federal government program designed to clean up sites contaminated by hazardous waste.

The EPA sent a written notice to 400 residents living within a half mile of the site inviting them to attend the Wednesday meeting, Lumino said. Representatives of the Vermont Department of Environmental Conservation and the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry also will be at the meeting.

Mitec, based in Montreal, was found by the state Agency of Natural Resources to have illegally disposed of an industrial solvent called trichloroethylene at the site when it leased manufacturing space there.

It was the same chemical that was found that has contaminated water in the area a decade later.

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Information from: The Burlington Free Press, http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com