[CPEO-BIF] Report from New Bedfore

[Lenny Siegel]

[The following report may be downloaded as a formatted 7-page, 2.7 MB 
PDF file with photos from
http://www.cpeo.org/pubs/NewBedford.pdf. - LS]


New Bedford, Massachusetts
By Lenny Siegel
September, 2006


On September 28, 2006, I visited New Bedford, Massachusetts. My 
principal host was John "Buddy" Andrade, of the Old Bedford Village 
Community Development Corporation. One of the oldest European 
settlements in the United States, New Bedford originally gained renown 
as home to whaling fleets. Later, its textile mills played a major part 
in the American industrial revolution. Today it is the number one 
fishing port in the continental United States.

New Bedford does not appear economically depressed, but the area around 
the historic harbor is underdeveloped. There are numerous old brick 
industrial buildings, as well as vacant land where such buildings 
formerly stood. New Bedford, with about 100,000 people today, has for 
centuries been home to people of Portuguese and Cape Verdean descent, 
and now it has growing Mexican and Guatemalan communities.

New Bedford's largest environmental problem is polluted harbor sediment. 
One of the nation's Superfund "mega-sites," the 18,000-acre harbor's 
sediment contains high concentrations of (polychlorinated biphenyls) 
PCB's in several areas. Though there were many sources, the largest 
appears to have been Aerovox, a manufacturer of electrical capacitors 
and transformers, which operated on the harbor's edge from about 1940 to 
1977. There are supposed to be signs along the waterfront warning people 
not to eat fish, but they often disappear and must be replaced.

EPA placed New Bedford Harbor on the "Superfund" National Priorities 
List in 1983. In 1990, it proposed a remedy that included incineration 
of PCB-laden waste. Public outcry, led by local groups such as Hands 
Across the River, blocked that proposal. In the late 1990's EPA approve 
a substitute remedy. Today sediment is dredged, de-sanded, de-watered, 
and shipped to a licensed PCB-landfill in Michigan.

The Army Corps of Engineers, under contract to U.S. EPA, started 
dredging harbor hotspots as early as 1994. This year, the Corps is in 
its third year of full-scale dredging. Over 40 days, it expects to 
removed 25,000 cubic yards of contaminated sediment, treat 20-million 
gallons of water, and ship 16,000 tons of residue by train to Michigan.

There is consensus support for the remedy, but community members express 
serious concern at the anticipated duration of the project. At the 
current rate, dredging will continue for an estimated 26 years. The 
problem isn't capacity or weather, but money.

Over the life of the project, EPA has spent over $220 million for 
"planning, engineering, and construction" at New Bedford Harbor. 
Reportedly, over $100 million has come from private responsible parties. 
However, the remaining funding - about $300 million more - will have to 
come from EPA's depleted Superfund. Without the Superfund tax on 
chemical production, that fund is entirely dependent upon Congressional 
appropriations. At $15 million per year, the project proceeds slowly and 
suffers significant inefficiencies from the imposed short dredging 
season. (EPA's complete description of the New Bedford Harbor Superfund 
Site can be found at http://www.epa.gov/ne/nbh.)

Activists are concerned about continuing public exposures to PCBs 
through water, air, and food chain pathways. They would like subsistence 
fishing to resume safely. And they point out that as long as the harbor 
is contaminated, comprehensive redevelopment will be difficult in New 
Bedford and other shoreline communities. On the other hand, while the 
painfully slow cleanup remains unacceptable, it may give local community 
groups the time they need to develop strategies to resist the 
gentrification pressures that will inevitably rise when this stretch of 
historic New England waterfront is once again deemed healthy.

In my brief tour of New Bedford, I saw numerous brownfields in various 
stages of redevelopment, including greenhouses, senior housing, and a 
parking lot for the "fast ferry" to the island of Martha's Vineyard. I 
describe four:

Keith Middle School

Landscapers and environmental crews are just about the only people on 
the new, $69 million campus of Keith Middle School. Built on a former 
dump site containing PCBs and other contaminants - presumably from the 
same companies that polluted the harbor - the school did not open as 
scheduled this Fall. Local officials were aware that the site had been 
used for dumping, but limited sampling showed moderate contamination.

A consultant said that the property could be made safe for $5 million, 
by capping the contamination in place. Fortunately, a bulldozer tore a 
hole in the cap in early August, demonstrating that the cap was not as 
robust as designed. Even if the August release were contained, the 
incident suggested the students and teachers might be exposed in the future.

While environmental regulators and city and school officials consider 
whether the school will ever be opened, no one seems to be investigating 
potential downgradient contamination. A public housing project lies 
downhill from the school site.

For a series of recent news reports on the Keith School situation, see 
http://www.southcoasttoday.com/daily/08-06/08-08-06/02topstories.htm.

Morse Cutting Tools

Morse Cutting Tools produced precision cutting tools on a two-block area 
in New Bedford from the late 1900s until 1987. Its multi-story brick 
buildings were demolished in 1997, but a mix of contamination, including 
oil and volatile organic compounds, remains underground. In that year, 
Congressman Barney Frank requested that the Agency for Toxic Substance 
and Disease Registry (ATSDR) conduct a public health assessment. See 
http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/HAC/PHA/morsecutting/mct_p1.html. ATDSR, as is 
its custom, conducted no sampling of its own, but it reported, "Results 
indicated that the levels of cis-1,2-dichloroethene, trichloroethene, 
vinyl chloride, barium, cadmium, chromium, lead, and silver exceeded 
health-based comparison values" in off-site groundwater."

ATSDR reported offsite TCE and vinyl chloride contamination at levels 
suggesting a potential vapor intrusion problem, but it downplayed indoor 
air concerns. It based its findings upon limited indoor air sampling - 
conducted before protocols for such investigations were well established 
- but it recommended "that indoor air concentrations be periodically 
monitored to ensure groundwater contaminants are not volatilizing into 
the air in nearby residences."

Meanwhile, a soil vapor extraction system constantly extracts volatile 
contaminants from the property.

Palmer's Cove

Just north of the stone hurricane barrier that guards the New Bedford 
Harbor sits Palmer's Island and Palmer's Cove. A patch of contaminated 
land, used for recreation in the 1970s, lies between the harbor and the 
John F. Kennedy Memorial Highway. A pedestrian overpass links the land, 
and potentially the waterfront, with the adjacent neighborhood.

Reportedly, the city of New Bedford highlighted the area in its 
successful application for Brownfields Showcase Community status. The 
Commonwealth of Massachusetts developed a plan for revitalizing the area 
with recreational facilities and public open space, including a 
boardwalk linking Palmer's Island with the mainland. But instead the 
city encouraged the construction of fish processing plants. The new 
mayor, who once played baseball on the site, has agreed to build a new 
diamond near the highway, but the rest of the plan remains unconsummated.

According to Buddy, Cape Verdeans and other people of color in the 
neighborhood want full restoration of the remaining open space. He 
points out that the New Bedford Harbor Trustee Council has funded parks 
in other neighborhoods near the harbor, but not in this area. The 
Trustee Council has dispensed millions of dollars assessed for Natural 
Resource Damage (NRD) at the Superfund site, and it has yet to announce 
grantees for its 2005 round of applications. However, advocates of the 
Palmer's Cove project learned of the request for proposals too late in 
the game, so they did not submit a proposal.

Perhaps because Natural Resource Damage Assessments are still the 
exception at Superfund sites, they usually lack vehicles for public 
involvement. In 2004, I gave a talk at a national conference on 
Cooperative Assessment, suggesting that major NRD projects establish 
community advisory groups. (See http://www.cpeo.org/pubs/PublicNRD.doc.) 
Such continuing community involvement would allow the Trustee Council to 
develop programs that take into account local community interest, as 
well as help community groups develop proposals that fit the Trustees' 
priorities.

Nashawena Mills

The former office and powerplant building for the Nashawena textile 
mills sits on the western shore of New Bedford Harbor. The building's 
owner has restored the office structure's wooden interior. The Coalition 
for Buzzards Bay, an environmental organization serving the entire 
Buzzards Bay watershed, leases space there and hopes to eventually buy 
the building. The boiler-room and smokestack have been abandoned in 
place, but the turbines have been removed from the vacuous, 
ceramic-tile-lined generator room. A basketball half-court covers much 
of the floor. I don't believe that there is a long-term plan for the 
non-office portion of the building, and during my brief visit I learned 
nothing about any potential contamination on site.

New Bedford is recuperating from deindustrialization and the 
contamination left by more than a century of industrial activity, but 
revitalization is being held back by the depletion of the national 
Superfund. While it's important that money be made available faster, the 
city and its residents can take advantage of the current situation by 
developing a comprehensive approach to revitalization that emphasizes 
equity, preservation of New Bedford's historical communities, and 
additional removal or treatment of environmental hazards.



-- 


Lenny Siegel
Director, Center for Public Environmental Oversight
c/o PSC, 278-A Hope St., Mountain View, CA 94041
Voice: 650/961-8918 or 650/969-1545
Fax: 650/961-8918
<lsiegel at cpeo.org>
http://www.cpeo.org