Gainesville's Cabot/Koppers Superfund Site Moves Into Next Cleanup Phase
EPA-approved work to replace a stormwater ditch, remove contaminated soil and build an underground containment wall begins this month at the decades-old north central Florida site.
What’s Starting This Week
Crews began preparation work this week at the Cabot/Koppers Superfund site in Gainesville, according to Alachua County officials. The prep work marks the start of a newly approved phase of cleanup at the long-contaminated industrial property, located roughly 60 miles northeast of Cedar Key in Alachua County.
Chris Gilbert, the county’s hazardous materials program manager, said this is the first week of staging work following federal approval of the next cleanup phase. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency approved plans that call for replacing an existing stormwater ditch with a new underground pipe system and removing contaminated soil from the site.
The Schedule
According to Gilbert, the stormwater conveyance pipe work, which will replace the open ditch, is scheduled to run from November through the end of January. Contaminated soil removal is expected to wrap up by February, officials said. A separate project to build an underground barrier wall is planned for March through July of next year.
Gilbert said the wall is intended to contain contamination at the site rather than remove it. That distinction matters for how the site functions going forward: the barrier will not eliminate the pollution, but is designed to keep it from spreading further through groundwater or soil movement.
Decades of Concern
The Cabot/Koppers site has drawn scrutiny from Gainesville-area residents for decades over contamination tied to historic industrial operations, including worries about water quality and effects on local wildlife. Signs posted at the site warn people to avoid contact with the soil and water, a visible marker of the restrictions still in place while cleanup continues.
The EPA’s Superfund program oversees remediation at sites where hazardous substances threaten public health or the environment, and the Cabot/Koppers property has been under federal and county monitoring as part of that process. The newly approved phase, covering the ditch replacement, soil removal and eventual containment wall, represents an incremental step in that longer-running effort rather than a final resolution.
Why This Reaches the Nature Coast
Gainesville sits well outside Levy County, and this cleanup does not involve Cedar Key’s waterfront, the refuge or local aquaculture operations directly. But the Cabot/Koppers site is one of the larger active federal Superfund cleanups in north central Florida, the same EPA region and groundwater system that touches the broader Nature Coast. Decisions about how contamination is contained, or not, in the upper Floridan aquifer recharge area carry regional weight for a part of the state where groundwater quality underpins both drinking water supplies and the spring-fed waterways that feed into Gulf coast estuaries.
No public comment period was cited in connection with this phase of work; the EPA’s approval has already been granted, and county officials describe the current activity as implementation, not a request for input. Residents with questions about the project timeline can follow updates through Alachua County’s hazardous materials program, which is coordinating the ditch and pipe work set to run through January.
The underground wall construction, planned for spring and summer of next year, will mark the next major milestone in the site’s cleanup, with contamination containment, not removal, as its stated goal.