City of Perryton Well No. 2

Overview

Well No. 2 is a former municipal drinking water well in Perryton, Texas that was shut down in 1989 after carbon tetrachloride and nitrate were discovered in the city's groundwater supply. The site draws from the Ogallala Aquifer, which has two zones separated by a confining layer. The lower zone serves as the primary water source for at least 11 municipal wells. EPA added the site to the National Priorities List (NPL) in 1999, making it eligible for federal Superfund cleanup funding.

Six contaminants have been identified in groundwater across the site: atrazine, carbon tetrachloride, chloroform, lead, nitrate, and nitrate/nitrite. EPA determined each poses an unacceptable risk to human health or the environment. The treatment system removed contamination from extracted groundwater to below detection limits, and the remaining city supply wells are not threatened and are routinely monitored. Human exposure is currently under control, with no unacceptable exposure pathways identified. However, the migration of contaminated groundwater has not been fully halted, and some monitoring wells in the deeper zone still exceed cleanup goals.

EPA installed a pump-and-treat system with an air-stripper and reverse-osmosis unit to address the contamination. The reverse-osmosis unit shut down in 2004 as water quality improved, and the pump-and-treat system ended in 2011 after meeting cleanup goals in the lower zone. EPA permanently plugged Well No. 2 in 2011 and removed treatment equipment in 2020. A leaking sewer line identified as a nitrate source was repaired by the city in 2002. EPA established a Technical Impracticability (TI) Zone for the upper aquifer zone, where full cleanup to standards is not considered feasible. The site reached sitewide ready for anticipated reuse status in September 2019.

The City of Perryton adopted Ordinance 1040-18 in 2018, restricting new well construction to prevent contaminants from spreading or moving between aquifer zones. Any new well within the TI Zone must draw water from below 345 feet below ground surface. The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) took over groundwater monitoring in 2018 and conducts annual sampling. EPA's most recent five-year review, completed in May 2023, found the remedy protective in the short term but noted that the upper zone and lower zone plumes must be fully mapped and the contamination source identified for long-term protection. An optimization study completed in 2024 is being evaluated for next steps. The next five-year review is estimated between May and July 2028.

Community members can review the full 2023 Five-Year Review Report online or contact EPA's Community Involvement Coordinator directly. The site has two on-site businesses currently operating, generating an estimated $158,000 in annual sales revenue as of December 2024. The site has not yet been deleted from the NPL.