General Motors Superfund Site

While in operation, various industrial wastes were generated and disposed of on-site, namely, two disposal areas (the North Disposal Area and the East Disposal Area), an industrial landfill and four industrial lagoons. PCBs have been found in the groundwater, on- and off-property soil, and sediment in the St. Lawrence and Raquette Rivers, Turtle Cove and Turtle Creek. Groundwater was also found to be contaminated with volatile organic compounds and phenols have been detected in lagoon sludge, as well as in the disposal areas.

Over the past seven decades of discovery, remediation and restoration, several important milestones occurred.

From 1988 to 2005, GM completed a number of significant cleanups, including the dredging of the St. Lawrence River, Raquette River and Turtle Cove, groundwater collection at the base of the landfill and the development of a system to collect and treat water running off the site before discharge to the St. Lawrence River.
With the bankruptcy of GM in 2011, the Revitalizing Auto Communities Environmental Response (RACER) Trust was formed and assumed ownership of the site. Since that time, the pace of cleanup has quickened. RACER has successfully performed the demolition of the former on-site manufacturing buildings, as well as removal of the contaminated soil from underneath the buildings and the removal of soil in and around the industrial waste water treatment lagoons. In total, more than a half million tons of PCB-contaminated materials have been removed from the site since RACER Trust assumed ownership.

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