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Getting toxic waste cleaned up can take years. Government regulators have to figure out the best approach: whether to dig up the waste, cap it or ship it away. And citizens don’t always agree. The debate over what to do with toxic waste is taking place on the Housatonic River, both at its source in Pittsfield, Massachusetts and in Stratford, where the river flows into Long Island Sound.
The former Raymark factory site in Stratford, which contained toxic waste, was capped and this shopping plaza was built on top: Photo by Nancy Eve CohenWhen 33 year old Krista Watson and her husband, Virgil, first moved to Stratford a year ago, they thought they were moving into the next up and coming place. That is until they went to buy some propane for their gas grill.
“The clerk at Home Depot said, ‘you can’t buy propane here. This is a superfund site.’ You can’t sell propane on a superfund site for a risk of explosion that would breach the cap. And we said oh my goodness. What have we moved into?”
What they had moved into was a town undergoing a toxic waste clean up. An auto parts manufacturer called Raymark Industries, which operated here from 1919 until 1989 left behind about one million cubic yards of toxic laden soils containing asbestos, lead, and PCBs. During the first part of the clean up in the mid 1990s the former factory site was capped and the Home Depot shopping plaza was built on top of it. Krista Watson’s shopping trip spurred her to find other concerned newcomers to Stratford
“We started educating ourselves, figuring out what had we bought into, learning the dirty not so secret in town and got organized. And started the Save Stratford organization.”
Watson’s group wants all the waste removed from town. But even they admit, that could be a challenge
A group of citizens and environmental regulators took a kind of toxic waste tour in Stratford: Photo by Nancy Eve CohenOn a recent evening Watson, a few other residents and several staffers from environmental agencies took a kind of toxic waste tour of Stratford. First stop: A chain link fence a short ride from the shopping plaza.
“Just stand there lean in and look and you can see the trees growing through the bleachers.”
Patrick Bowe of the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection points out the bleachers in an old ballfield that was once a place of pride in Stratford. The Raybestos Girl All-Stars softball team started playing here in 1947. The team (Still going strong. Now known as the Brakettes) was sponsored by Raymark. Years later poison ivy covers the fence that surrounds the field and no one’s playing.
“It has about 200 thousand cubic yards of Raymark waste buried in it.”
This is just one of dozens of properties in the town contaminated by Raymark that the government is cleaning up. The problem is the waste is everywhere. In wetlands near the Housatonic River, on a number of commercial properties, under a temporary cap in a landfill —and on this ball field.
Stratford resident Paul Rohaly stands in front of Ferry Creek, which is contaminated with toxic waste: Photo by Nancy Eve Cohen“When I moved here 18 years ago… I thought it was a great place to raise a family.”
Paul Rohaly, the father of twins, who lives next to the ballfield, says in an ideal world he’d like all the waste from all over town taken away. Bur he says that’s impractical.
“Asbestos in the ground bothers no one. It’s when you breach the ground and get it up that it become a hazard. And getting it airborne.”
But even capping it isn’t simple. The Home Depot site, built on capped waste, looks like any other shopping plaza. But it needs to be maintained and monitored in case any of the toxins escape into the air. This costs Connecticut $300 thousand a year.
Money is a big consideration. the government has about $21 million to spend which it got from selling off Raymark assets. With the company out of business the government is responsible for the rest of the bill. But there isn’t a lot of money in the federal Superfund.
Jim Murphy of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says it would be too expensive to remove waste from sites like the ballfield
“That would never make sense to us just because of the quantities of waste. It would be prohibitively expensive. We’re dealing with taxpayers dollars and there’s no good reason to move it.”
Although the EPA hasn’t made a formal proposal Murphy says it favors taking the waste from smaller sites, consolidating it in places where there is already large amounts of Raymark waste and redeveloping those properties – just as they did with the shopping plaza. But some residents don’t want soil containing asbestos and other toxins trucked past their homes, where it could spill or get into the air.
“They want it out of town permanently. Send it someplace else. Well, there’s really no where to ever send it away. It’s going to go to somebody else’s town”
At the other end of the Housatonic River near Pittsfield, Massachusetts what to do with toxic waste is also a problem. That’s the site of a clean up from an old General Electric plant.Some fo the waste has been capped or dumped at a disposal site next to one of the city’s elementary schools. Now the EPA and G-E are discussing the rest of the river. Tim Gray, with the Housatonic River Initiative, supports the use of new technologies that would render PCBs harmless without having to dig them up...they include enzymes, destroying them with heat and chemical washing.
“The E.P.A. is way behind the times as far as disposal of hazardous waste and generally their first option and the one they love the best is to just landfill it . My group has always pushed for treatment technologies that destroy pollutants rather than create a situation where you have to landfill everything.”
But the EPA maintains that these treatments on PCBs are still being developed.
Just west of the Housatonic in New York, on the Hudson River, a massive clean up of 2.65 million cubic yards of sediment contaminated with PCBs from two General Electric plants is about to begin. But there --- the EPA has a different plan.
“The material will then be stabilized and then loaded onto rail cars and transported to an approved disposal facility in Texas.”
David Kluesner from the New York office of the EPA says before deciding to take the waste out of state the agency first tried to put a disposal site near the river, but the community wouldn’t have it.
“There would be likely very little chance of success for locating a disposal facility in the Hudson valley based on the tremendous opposition we saw during the 1990s.”
The opposition was organized by environmental groups, like Clearwater. It launched an intensive on-the-ground campaign that garnered the support of residents as well as fishermen and hunters, and even Governor Pataki. Andy Mele who was executive director of Clearwater at the time, says harnessing political clout was key.
“The state, the Senators, the Hudson River delegation was spectacular. Congressional delegation: Republicans and Democrats both. And it was just hugely powerful. Hugely important. The E.P.A. was surrounded. They had no place to go.”
State Representative John Harkins,listens as Ron Curran of the DEP describes the layers that make up a protective cap: Photo by Nancy Eve CohenBack in Stratford, Connecticut citizens’ concerns have motivated state lawmakers to get involved. State Representative John Harkins co-sponsored legislation that prohibits consolidating toxic waste near neighborhoods without the permission of town government.
“If the material is that dangerous, like they’ve been telling us then do the right thing. Get as much material as possible out of the town so we don’t have to deal with it forever.”
Whether this state law can stop federal regulators from consolidating the waste is unclear. But there’s an effort to come to an agreement. Residents along with state and federal regulators are meeting weekly. They have a tough mission: to reach consensus on a a long-term clean up strategy by Thanksgiving.
