Crystal City Airport sits on 120 acres in Crystal City, Texas. It started as a military installation during World War II and was transferred to the city in 1949. From the 1950s through 1982, aerial pesticide application businesses operated there, leaving soil contaminated with arsenic, p,p'-DDT, and toxaphene. A 1983 state inspection found more than 70 drums of decomposing waste pesticides abandoned on the property. EPA added the site to the Superfund National Priorities List in 1986.
EPA carried out three removal actions between 1983 and 1988. The main cleanup, finished by December 1991, involved consolidating about 12,000 cubic yards of contaminated soil into a single cell, placing a Resource Conservation and Recovery Act cap over that cell, demolishing and decontaminating buildings, relocating airport facilities, and installing a fence around the consolidation cell. The airport reopened in 1990 while that work was underway. EPA deleted the site from the National Priorities List in March 1995.
Human exposure is under control. The most recent five-year review, completed in June 2021, confirmed the remedy continues to protect human health and the environment. That review also identified a need for institutional controls to prevent subsurface activities like trenching, excavation, and well installation, and to prohibit residential use. In response, the city of Crystal City adopted a local ordinance in August 2022 to put those controls in place. The site achieved sitewide ready for anticipated reuse status in January 2011, meaning all cleanup goals for current and future land uses have been met. Long-term maintenance continues, including cap and fence inspections, monitoring of a nearby municipal water supply well, and groundwater sampling every five years by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.
Community members can read the full 2021 Five-Year Review Report online or in person at the Southwest Junior College Library at 215 W Zavala Street in Crystal City, or by calling (830) 374-3378. The site's remedial administrative record, which contains over 100 documents along with addenda and the Sixth Five-Year Review, is also available through EPA's Superfund records system. The next five-year review is estimated between June and August 2026. Anyone with questions can contact the EPA or the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.
