Alaska Battery Enterprises operated as a battery recycling facility from 1962 to 1992 on a 1-acre property about 1.5 miles south of Fairbanks, Alaska. It was added to the EPA's National Priorities List (NPL), the federal Superfund list, on March 31, 1989. The site has since been fully cleaned up and deleted from that list.
The main contamination problem was lead in the soil. Battery recycling practices left lead and other hazardous chemicals throughout the property. Workers crushed batteries onsite, dumped spent battery acid directly on the ground, and used scrap batteries as fill material. An EPA inspection in 1980 confirmed electrolyte fluid had been dumped onsite and that surface soil had elevated lead levels. Groundwater was also tested, but monitoring from 1993 through 1995 confirmed it was not contaminated with lead.
Cleanup began in 1988. Workers excavated roughly 4,000 cubic yards of contaminated soil and hauled it to a permitted hazardous waste facility. In 1992, the EPA's Innovative Technology Evaluation Program used soil washing to treat an additional 130 cubic yards of lead-contaminated soil. The EPA completed its Remedial Investigation and Feasibility Study by March 1993 and issued a final remedy of "no further action" on March 2, 1993, meaning cleanup goals had been met. The site was deleted from the NPL on July 26, 1996.
Today, human exposure at the site is under control. EPA assessments find no unacceptable exposure pathways through soil contact or ingestion. Groundwater migration is also stabilized, with no unacceptable discharge to surface water, and EPA monitoring continues to confirm the contamination stays in its original area. In 2013, the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation reviewed the site because of a potential property transfer. It determined that institutional controls, meaning land-use restrictions, must stay in place, but that remaining contaminant levels pose no unacceptable risk to people or the environment. The site achieved sitewide ready-for-anticipated-reuse status on June 17, 2020.
Community members who want to follow developments can look for publicly available documents on file with the EPA. The EPA's Superfund Redevelopment Program also works with communities to support productive reuse of cleaned-up sites like this one. Five publicly available documents are on record for the site.
