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Top EPA Officials To Meet With Coakley Superfund Neighbors

Annie Ropeik
/
NHPR

The Environmental Protection Agency will meet Monday with residents who live near the Coakley Landfill Superfund site on the Seacoast.

An EPA spokesman says the agency’s New England administrator, the new head of the Superfund task force and others will be in Greenland to fulfill a promise to talk with neighbors about their concerns.

Some fear the capped landfill is spreading toxic chemicals into their drinking water. Federal and state regulators say the site is safe and well-maintained.

Still, they’re studying the bedrock beneath Coakley to see if contamination could leach into water. That study is expected to take up to two years.

The EPA is also creating new limits for the substances neighbors are worried about – known as PFAS chemicals. The agency will begin work on those new standards in Portsmouth later this month.

But neighbors of Coakley want to see potentially toxic waste pumped out and treated. 

Their meetings with EPA officials and environmental advocates are closed to the press, but the group will speak to reporters in Greenland Monday afternoon. 

Annie has covered the environment, energy, climate change and the Seacoast region for NHPR since 2017. She leads the newsroom's climate reporting project, By Degrees.
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