US asked to probe taint site
Owners call it safe; town looks to EPA
Email|Print|Single Page| Text size – + By Christine Legere
Globe Correspondent / June 26, 2008
Worried by recent readings at monitoring wells, Middleborough officials are asking federal environmental experts to help determine if chemical contamination is leaching to the surface at a decades-old hazardous waste site.

The Middleborough Conservation Commission last week sent a letter to the Environmental Protection Agency - the agency that classified Rockland Industries on Plymouth Street a Tier I hazardous waste site in the mid-1980s - asking that its technical experts review the results. The wells are designed to detect the presence of dangerous contaminants in the soil and groundwater.

"Something has changed and something has happened to cause it," said commission vice chairman Michael O'Shaughnessy. Selectmen say they support the Conservation Commission's effort to involve the EPA.

In response, the attorney for Rockland Industries said the fluctuations were not of immediate concern.

"It's a two-year monitoring program, and it won't be done until August of 2008," said attorney Paul Feldman. "Right now, what we're saying is there's no immediate harm to anybody, and when the test program is complete, we'll evaluate the data."

Rockland Industries, owned by the late Daniel Striar and now by his children, manufactured and repackaged chemicals used to dye textiles from 1966 to 1982. For years, waste water containing hazardous byproducts was discharged through pipes and floor drains, into a lagoon on the property, according to later findings by federal environmental officials. A drainage ditch from the lagoon directed the run-off to a swamp and ultimately into Purchade Brook, which borders the west side of the site, environmental officials found.

More than 40 contaminants were identified on the property during a federal site evaluation in the 1990s. Hundreds of bar rels of chemicals, some buried and others stored, were removed during cleanup. Some of those chemicals are linked to cancer and other illnesses.

Two years ago, the state Department of Environmental Protection, now in charge of supervising site cleanup, allowed Roux Associates, the firm hired by Rockland Industries to handle the job, to flush out some old pipes formerly used to channel chemicals into a lagoon and out to wetlands. After the pipes were flushed, they were sealed.

While neighbors of the site were hoping the state Department of Environmental Protection would require Rockland Industries to remove all contaminated soil, DEP officials instead allowed site cleanup crews to place 12 to 18 inches of clean soil over sediments laced with chemicals. The areas were then replanted with wetlands vegetation, to keep surface waters from picking up the chemicals beneath the fill.

To determine whether those measures were adequate, the DEP required regular testing through monitoring wells over a two-year period. That action began late in 2006.

It is recent changes in those results that worry some local residents, as well as some town officials.

The Conservation Commission asked Neil Ram, Roux's vice president, to explain the monitoring changes. His answers, delivered at the commission's meeting last month, did not satisfy the panel.

"Roux's contention was some fluctuation in levels in the monitoring wells was expected. We contend otherwise," said Middleborough Conservation Agent Patricia Cassady. "We think something else is going on."

Since the town doesn't have the money to pay for its own technical experts to review and interpret test results, officials must rely on Rockland Industries' cleanup team and the state DEP. "We just want another party involved," Cassady said.

Conservation Commission member Ed Thomas said neighbors and former employees of Rockland Industries have been saying for years that barrels remain buried on the site, far under the surface. "If there's a perceived problem there, all we're saying is why doesn't somebody go in and take a peek around," Thomas said. "It would put everybody's fears to rest."

The Conservation Commission recently ordered Roux Associates to regularly attend its meetings to discuss the Rockland Industries site. Feldman, Rockland Industries attorney, sent the commission a response saying Roux's experts would not comply with that order.

According to Feldman, Rockland Industries has spent "millions" on cleanup to date and it would be too costly to pay Roux's experts to attend commission meetings. He said Roux was doing everything DEP officials have ordered.

"We'll follow the rules and we'll do what's required, but we're not going to have two masters here," Feldman said.

Feldman said Roux and Rockland Industries are not concerned about the federal EPA's potential involvement. "If the EPA wants to look or other experts want to look, they're not going to find anything," Feldman said.

State health officials recently announced that Middleborough had a far higher incidence of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS or Lou Gehrig's disease) than elsewhere in the state. The rate is 72 percent higher than the national rate for the disease, state officials calculated. That issue, and a possible environmental link to contaminated sites like Rockland Industries, is still being studied.

Patrick Rogers, a selectman and longtime employee of the Department of Environmental Protection, said he believes DEP should be given time to review test data once the monitoring program is complete. DEP officials are to meet with Middleborough selectmen next month to discuss the Rockland Industries site.

"This property has been under investigation by the DEP for many years, and I think that physically, the site is clean," Rogers said.

He added it's still important for the public to feel safe. "We have to think about how best we can assure people there's nothing buried out there and we don't have a time bomb ticking," Rogers said. "I don't think ground-penetrating radar has ever been used out there. We could ask about that. It would go a long way toward making people feel better."

"I want to have an operative set of facts to work from very quickly," said selectmen chairman Adam Bond. "Once we get that, I want to move quickly toward finding some creative answers."

Christine Legere can be reached at christinelegere@yahoo.com.