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A Cecil County property used to make fireworks and World War II munitions has been proposed for the Superfund National Priorities List.
In response to a request from Governor Martin O’Malley, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced in October that it is proposing the addition of the Dwyer Property site to the Superfund list.
The site, now abandoned and heavily overgrown, is proposed for the list because the groundwater is contaminated with levels of trichloroethene (TCE) that are above EPA’s Safe Drinking Water Act maximum contaminant levels for potable water.
The Department of the Environment studied the site and determined that it should be added to the Superfund list because of the complex remediation required to remove the contamination. The addition of the site to the Superfund list would allow EPA resources to be used to further address the contamination and cleanup.
The 70-acre Dwyer property is near Elkton, north of the corner of Maryland routes 549 and 275.
Following the war, the Bowers Battery & Spark Plug Company manufactured carbon batteries at the site from 1946 until 1948. Aerial Products produced fireworks and munitions on the site until it ceased operations in 1958. After 1958, Aerial Products’ president Martin Dwyer was believed to have used the location to manufacture incendiary flares until 1972. After Dwyer’s death in 1986, the property transferred to several heirs and fell into disuse, was overgrown with vegetation, and became a place for unpermitted dumping of household and commercial waste.
In January 2001, MDE completed an investigation identifying high concentrations of chlorinated solvents in the surficial aquifer. With no responsible persons to pay for the cleanup of the site, MDE used the state superfund to further assess the chlorinated solvent contamination.
The work plans included the installation of more than 70 on- and off-site monitoring wells, 10 piezometers, and more than 160 borings to identify areas contaminated with chlorinated solvents. Two solvent plumes were discovered, along with at least one source area where a 92 percent chlorinated solvent trichloroethylene (TCE) product was identified. Additional investigations showed that cleaning up the large, overgrown, and geologically complex site would be far more challenging than initially expected.
In May, Maryland asked EPA to add the property to the Superfund National Priorities List of sites where hazardous contaminants could affect public health or the environment. Once a site has been proposed for the list, there is a 60-day comment period. The Dwyer site could be added to the List by April.
MDE will continue to review plans for the site. If formally listed, federal law requires Maryland to pay for 10 percent of the costs of the cleanup of the site and any long-term operations and maintenance of the cleanup system, if necessary, once the cleanup is completed.
For more information regarding this Dwyer site and its proposed listing on the NPL, contact Jim Carroll at 410-537-3437 or by email at James.Carroll@maryland.gov.
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