Indiana secondary metals site added to Superfund list

The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has announced the addition of three sites and a proposal to add four more to the Superfund National Priorities List (NPL).

Among the three sites just added is the former home of the Federated Metals Corp. (FMC) Whiting smelter in Hammond, Indiana.

According to the website of the Whiting-Robertsdale Historical Society, the Northern Indiana facility “melted and refined metals like brass, lead and zinc, beginning in 1939. The  raw materials needed for their operations included scrap, nonferrous metals and their byproducts, like drosses and skimmings, from other smelters.”

The EPA’s own description of the facility also refers to it as one that engaged in “metal smelting, refining, recovery and recycling” that operated under FMC’s management for nearly 50 years.

Also according to the EPA, in 1985 FMC sold the smelter and 17 acres on which it sat to an entity called the HBR Partnership. “Subsequently, other businesses, including Northern Indiana Metals and Whiting Metals purchased the 17-acre parcel and continued to conduct smelting operations off and on until 2020,” says the EPA.

Lead “found at elevated concentrations in residential yards and lake sediments” and “arsenic found at elevated concentrations in residential yards near the facility” are listed by the EPA as problematic aspects of the Whiting smelter.

As an NPL site, it joins a list designed to identify those “where historic releases of hazardous substances, pollutants or contaminants pose significant threats to human health and the environment,” according to the EPA.

The agency also says a $3.5 billion allocation via the Biden administration’s Investing in America initiative means the EPA is “accelerating its work to clean up harmful pollution at NPL sites in communities located across the country.”

The EPA says in addition to the Whiting smelter site and two others now added to the NPL, it has identified four other sites it proposes to add to the list next.

Two of those were once host to facilities operated by lead acid battery producer Exide Technologies: one in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and the other in Laureldale, Pennsylvania.

At the Baton Rouge site, the EPA says Exide operated a secondary lead smelter and refinery from 1969 to 2020. A proposed EPA NPL site narrative document dated this September indicates “high concentrations of arsenic, antimony, lead, manganese and zinc have been found in the groundwater and soils onsite.”

At the Laureldale location, “Historic emissions from lead smelting, primarily in years prior to the installation of emission control systems at the facility, caused the deposition of lead in surface soils in the community surrounding Exide,” according to the proposed NPL document for that location.

The Pennsylvania site’s battery production and recycling history traces back further than the Louisiana one. Lead-acid battery manufacturing and recycling there began in the mid-1930s under the Bowers Battery Co., according to the EPA.

The agency says the former General Battery Corp. purchased the facility in 1958, and in 1987 that company was acquired by Exide Corp., which operated the facility for lead smelting and lead-acid battery recycling until 2013. From 2013 to 2016, the lead smelter did not operate, and Exide instead recycled non-hazardous materials until ceasing all operations in Laureldale in 2020, when Exide reorganized via a bankruptcy.