Louisville Begins Process to Clean Superfund Site

Parks officials in Louisville, Kentucky are taking the first steps to clean up a hazardous waste site in a public park locally known as ‘Gully of the Drums,’ reports James Bruggers in Inside Climate News. The city released a plan to take soil samples and dig trenches to assess the condition of the site.

As Bruggers explains, “The site sits about 700 feet from the notorious ‘Valley of the Drums,’ where some 17,000 hazardous waste drums were discovered in the late 1970s on farmland 17 miles south of downtown Louisville, which were removed in one of the first major federal Superfund cleanups in the United States.” 

While the Valley was cleaned up by the EPA, the Gully site remained contaminated with 40 to 45 barrels of toxic waste. “The new study, if approved by the Louisville Metro Council, will involve taking soil samples near the visible drums as well as digging trenches to see whether unseen barrels or containers of toxic waste were also buried, and then testing the soil to see if that area has hazardous waste.”

Lauren Heberle, a professor at the University of Louisville, says the plan could do more to address contaminants like PFAS that were not tested for before, and should also test groundwater and a nearby creek.