EPA: Infrastructure law will fund clean-up at Kil-Tone property in Vineland

VINELAND – The nation’s new infrastructure law will fund clean-up work at a former pesticide plant here, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

The Kil-Tone Co. property in Vineland is one of seven “backlogged” Superfund sites in New Jersey to benefit from the new law, according to the EPA.

Funds also are being directed to two sites in Burlington County — the former Roebling Steel complex in Florence and the Kauffman & Minteer property in Springfield.

Overall, the EPA will spend $1 billion in infrastructure money for work that was previously unfunded at 49 sites across the country. The agency said it also will accelerate clean-up efforts at dozens of other sites across the country.

“Approximately 60 percent of the sites to receive funding for new cleanup projects are in historically underserved communities,” EPA Administrator Michael Regan noted in a statement Friday.

The Kil-Tone site, on the 500 block of East Chestnut Avenue, made arsenic-based pesticides from the late 1910s to the late 1930s, according to the EPA.

The EPA has not specified how much money will be available to address “elevated concentrations of arsenic and/or lead” on and around the Vineland property.

The agency said it is “finalizing cleanup plans and preparing funding mechanisms to get construction work started as soon as possible.”

A clean-up effort at the Vineland site already has targeted some of about 57 residential properties with soil contamination due to the former plant’s operations.

The EPA has said future work will address soil contamination at the former plant and at neighboring properties that are non-residential.

Clean-up crews also are expected to address pollution of groundwater near the plant, as well as in and along the Tarkiln branch of the Maurice River.

Jim Walsh covers public safety, economic development and other beats for the Courier-Post, Burlington County Times and The Daily Journal.

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This article originally appeared on Vineland Daily Journal: Arsenic, lead pollute site of Kil-Tone pesticide plant in Vineland