Lower Darby Creek Area

Overview

The Lower Darby Creek Area is a Superfund site in Darby Township, Pennsylvania, built around two closed landfills, Clearview and Folcroft, that accepted municipal, demolition, and hospital wastes from the 1950s through the mid-1970s. EPA added the site to the National Priorities List in 2001. Cleanup is organized into four areas covering the landfills, groundwater, and aquatic environments. Work is at very different stages across those four areas.

Contaminants found at the site include polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs, specifically Aroclor 1254 and Aroclor 1260), polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), 1,4-dioxane, trichloroethylene, arsenic, cadmium, copper, lead, zinc, pesticides including DDT and chlordane, and other metals and organic chemicals. These contaminants affect soil, groundwater, surface water, sediments, and fish and turtle tissue in Darby and Cobbs creeks. Residents currently have public drinking water and are not exposed to groundwater contamination. Consuming fish and snapping turtles from the area poses the largest current health risk at the site.

The Clearview Landfill saw the most progress. EPA excavated contaminated soil from 195 residential properties in the Eastwick neighborhood, built a forest-based evapotranspiration cover over about 54 acres using more than 60,000 planted trees, and stabilized over 3,000 feet of streambank. Major construction wrapped up in May 2025, with a methane control trench due to finish in 2025 and vegetation stewardship transferring to Pennsylvania in Fall 2027. Groundwater pilot projects are now testing three technologies, including foam fractionation installed in October 2025, to treat PFAS, 1,4-dioxane, and arsenic. For the Folcroft Landfill, potentially responsible parties are conducting ecological risk testing in 2026, and cleanup option studies are expected to be finalized in 2027 and 2028. Aquatic environment sampling began in May 2025 and runs through Spring 2026, with an angler survey running May through August 2026.

Community members can stay involved through the Eastwick Lower Darby Creek Area Community Advisory Group (ELDCA CAG), which meets quarterly via Microsoft Teams and is open to the public. Meetings in 2026 are scheduled for January 14, March 11, June 10, and September 16, all starting at 6:30 p.m. Updates are available by signing up at http://join.redflaghub.com/lowerdarby. Fish advisory signs are posted in multiple languages including Khmer, Vietnamese, Ukrainian, and Spanish. EPA also recently updated its residential lead-in-soil screening level to 200 parts per million (ppm) and Region 3 is evaluating how that affects properties near the site.