Notable case, Palmerton, Pennsylvania, United States

Palmerton Zinc Pile

For nearly seventy years the New Jersey Zinc smelter released heavy metals over the Lehigh valley, stripping about 2,000 acres of mountainside bare. It is one of the best-known cases of revegetating soil made barren by metals.

Phytoremediation

At a glance

Area
809 ha on land1
Media
soil, surface water, groundwater, air
Kind of site
smelter
National list
Listed 1983National Priorities List
  1. Area. About 2,000 acres (809 ha) of Blue Mountain left without vegetation; in addition, the Cinder Bank slag pile is 2.5 miles long.

Contaminants

National list

On the list (final)United States

Superfund National Priorities List (NPL)

Listed
1983
Official id
PAD002395887 ↗
About this list

The list of contaminated sites that are national priorities for federal clean-up under CERCLA (Superfund, 1980), kept by EPA (40 CFR Part 300, Appendix B). Listing makes a site eligible for long-term remedial action paid by the Superfund; sites are proposed and then listed through Federal Register notices, and deleted when no further response is needed.

Includes federal facilities (Defense, Energy). Dates are the years of the Federal Register notices (final listing, deletion); 'listed' is empty for proposed sites. Some sites still on the list have had partial deletions. Contaminants and media: contaminants of concern from decision documents (RODs, ROD amendments, ESDs; EPA, fiscal years 1981-2024, SEMS document HQ/406315); for sites with no decision document (mostly proposed or recently listed) the contaminants are those EPA records for the site (FOIA-015, document HQ/406366), with no medium. 'Deleted' means EPA found no further response needed, which can include land-use controls still in force.

Status

Remediation under way

The 2022 five-year review found that the remedy remains protective of health and the environment. Revegetation of Blue Mountain and management of the slag pile continue, with CBS Corporation as the responsible party.

Story

The New Jersey Zinc Company ran a primary zinc smelter at Palmerton for nearly seventy years. Emissions of zinc, cadmium, lead and copper killed the vegetation on about 2,000 acres of Blue Mountain, leaving a barren landscape. The slag formed the Cinder Bank: more than 30 million tons of residue in a pile 2.5 miles long, up to 200 feet high and 500 to 1,000 feet wide.

The site went on the National Priorities List in 1983 and was split into four operable units. Of 2,400 properties sampled, about 180 needed soil replacement, finished in autumn 2004. On the mountain the remedy consists of rebuilding a plant cover.

Timeline

  1. 1983Placed on the National Priorities List.
  2. 2004Soil cleanup at about 180 residential properties completed.
  3. 2006Seeding by farm tractor on more than 200 acres of Blue Mountain.
  4. 2012Aerial application of lime, fertiliser and seed on 1,628 acres completed (2011–2012).
  5. 201313,000 trees planted in resource islands.

Remediation

  1. 2004soil replacementSoil replaced at about 180 properties and indoor dust cleaned in 20 homes (by summer 2005).

Plants and fungi at this site

PhytoremediationField scale, 2006–2013

Phytostabilisation of Blue Mountain: warm-season grasses sown with lime and fertiliser, first by farm tractor on more than 200 acres (2006), then from the air on 1,628 acres (2011–2012), and 13,000 trees planted in resource islands (2013). The EPA page consulted does not list the species.

From the literature

Species that acted on one of this site's contaminants in at least one study. The list is automatic and takes no account of this site's soil, concentrations or climate.

Plants

Fungi

The rest are on the contaminant pages.

Nearby

Sources

  1. Palmerton Zinc Pile, Palmerton, PA – Cleanup Activities, US EPA, 2026
  2. Palmerton, Pennsylvania (coordinates), Wikipedia, 2026

Draft compiled from public sources, not yet reviewed.