PORTSMOUTH, Va. (AP) - The federal government has agreed to spend about $65 million to clean up land in Virginia's Hampton Roads region that was polluted by a wood treatment facility and used as a military dump site.
The Environmental Protection Agency announced the agreement in a statement Thursday.
The area is located along the Elizabeth River in Portsmouth and sits near a U.S. Navy shipyard. It's been a federally designated Superfund site since 1990.
Atlantic Wood Industries and related companies had treated wood with toxic chemicals on the site for much of the 20th Century. The Navy also leased some of the land to dump contaminated waste. It included material that was used to sand blast ships.
The EPA in the 1980s found widespread contamination in the soil, groundwater, and river sediment.
