Maryland's secretary of the environment has asked federal regulators to add an Army dump site in Frederick to a list of the nation's most polluted places.

The Frederick News-Post reports that Department of the Environment Secretary Shari Wilson has asked the federal Environmental Protection Agency to grant Superfund status to a section of Fort Detrick known as Area B.

She says adding the site to the National Priorities List would enable state regulators to take action to force completion of a cleanup the Army began after chemical pollution of the ground water was first detected in 1991.

The Army says it has spent $43 million removing industrial and laboratory waste dumped at Area B decades ago, but it has yet to clean up the tainted ground water.

Information from: The Frederick (Md.) News-Post.

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