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EPA Proposes Troy Mills to Superfund List

Release Date: 04/30/2003
Contact Information: Alice Kaufman, EPA Community Involvement Office, 617-918-1064

BOSTON -The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) today proposed the Troy Mills Landfill in Troy, New Hampshire, to the National Priorities List (NPL), commonly known as the Superfund. The Superfund is EPA's list of the country's hazardous waste sites that have been identified for possible long-term cleanup by the federal government. Superfund makes public funds available to clean up toxic waste sites when private financing is unavailable. The government can later recoup its costs from current and past owners of the property.
"There are thousands of drums buried in this old landfill," said Robert W. Varney, EPA New England regional administrator. "Today's listing ensures that this site will get cleaned up. We are looking forward to working closely with the community to help us every step of the way."

The Troy Mills Landfill (also called the Rockwood Brook Landfill), which is owned and operated by Troy Mills, Inc., is located about 1.5 miles from town off of a dirt road on the company's mostly wooded 270-acre property. The 11-acre landfill was used from1967 until 2001as an industrial waste disposal area by the owner, a local fabric manufacturer. From 1967 to 1978, two acres were used to dispose of up to an estimated 11,000 drums of liquid wastes and sludges containing Varsol, vinyl resins, plasticizers, pigments, top-coating products and industrial organic solvents. After 1978, the remaining nine acres were used to dispose of waste fabric scraps and other solid waste from the company's manufacturing complex. EPA and the state identified elevated levels of metals, volatile organic compounds (VOCs), and semi-volatile organic compounds (SVOCs)leaking from uncontainerized waste at the landfill, endangering the downstream fisheries, recreation areas, and wetlands.

Contaminated leachate has been documented seeping from the landfill into a wetland area that drains to Rockwood Brook. "Free product" was detected in groundwater monitoring locations and wetlands down gradient of the buried drums. During the summer of 2003 EPA and the state will construct an interim system to collect this free product. Sand Dam Pond, a recreational pond used for swimming and fishing is located on Rockwood Brook approximately one mile downstream of the landfill.

In 1992, Troy Mills, Inc., completed a feasibility study detailing a proposed remedy that included capping the inactive disposal area, installing additional monitoring wells, and, if necessary, implementing a groundwater recovery and treatment system. The company in cooperation with the NH DES then completed detailed design studies. The company filed for bankruptcy protection in 2001 and could not implement the remedial design approved by the NHDES in 2000.

EPA conducted an Expanded Site Inspection (ESI), including wetland delineation, in October and December 2001. EPA documented contaminated leachate directly discharging to a nearby wetland threatening downstream fisheries, a designated recreation area, and wetlands.