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SALT LAKE CITY (AP) -- Kennecott Utah Copper officials and government regulators say years of cleanup at a contaminated site have paid off and it won't be designated as a federal Superfund site.
Kennecott President Andrew Harding told the Deseret News editorial board that company officials expect the Environmental Protection Agency to remove an area known as the "South Zone" from the list of proposed Superfund sites next week.
About $400 million has been spent cleaning up mining waste that predates Kennecott's involvement at the site near Magna.
Peggy Linn, a community involvement coordinator for the EPA in Denver, said notice of the change is expected to be published in the Federal Register Sept. 3. The company completed a list of tasks, including remediating contaminated groundwater.
"We're very pleased with the work they did," Linn told The Associated Press on Tuesday. "Within the whole South Zone, everything has been cleaned up."
The South Zone and an area called the North Zone were both placed on the list of proposed Superfund sites in 1994.
State and federal officials reached agreements the next year to keep the sites off the Superfund list, a designation for the nation's most contaminated places.
Kennecott officials are hoping the North Zone will be taken off the proposed list in the coming years.
"It allows you to concentrate on moving forward with plans for the future," Harding said.
Plans include large-scale residential developments on the west side of the Salt Lake Valley.
There is still plenty of work to be done, though. Sulfates and heavy metals are still in the groundwater on the west side.
"It's going to be a decades long process," said Kelly Payne, principal adviser over closure and remediation for Kennecott.
Earlier this year, the company entered into an agreement in federal court requiring that millions of dollars more be spent cleaning up contaminated groundwater. Payne said the agreement was the last step in getting the EPA to remove the South Zone from the proposed Superfund list.
Information from: Deseret News
(Copyright 2008 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
