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Narration: Before the advent of
environmental regulations, industry used
chemicals haphazardly. Although, under
current environmental laws chemicals are
tightly regulated and some are illegal to
produce due to their toxicity, in the past,
they were not seen as harmful to human
health or the environment. In New
England, where the American industrial
revolution was born, legacy sites, where
chemicals were manufactured, used, and
dumped, dot the landscape.
Mike Janinski: What prompted
everybody’s attention towards the
Fletcher Paint Site was the Keyes
Municipal Well. Through routine
environmental sampling by the state of
New Hampshire and others they found volatile organic
contaminates in that municipal well,
which caused a lot of problems because it
provided drinking water for many
residents in the town of Milford. We
started to look for the contaminators and
guess what? Fletcher Paint was very close
to that well and that brought in the whole
study to it.
Narration: This site is unique. It had been
an industrial site since the 1800s and
there was a town dump buried
underneath it. The Fletcher Paint
company had some side chemical
businesses. They made pesticides, they
made perfumes, and they made asphalt
and roofing materials. EPA had to identify
why there were so many PCBs associated
with a paint facility because it wasn’t
typical. It was discovered that three
companies were supplying a material
called scrap pyranol, which is essentially a
PCB material that comes out of capacitors
or transformers. General Electric was
Fletcher’s largest supplier of this material.
Fletcher’s Paint was bringing the scrap
pyranol in and shipping it out in products
for asphalt and roofing companies.
Dean Tagliaferro: Unfortunately, they had
about 800 drums of hazardous substances
placed on the parking lot, which was a
soil-based parking lot. The owners did not
really know what the material was and the
drums were slowly rotting and the
materials were leaking out very close to
the river so that was a threat to the river,
a threat to the ground and the general area.
Narration: This site in located near
businesses, residences, and an elementary
school. The local Boys and Girls Club is just
across the river.
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Once it was understood that Fletcher’s
Paint was the source of the contamination
of the Keyes Municipal Well, EPA began
work to remove the leaking drums and
conducted preliminary soil sampling. EPA
did this work in 1988 via removal actions.
Removal actions are typically short term
actions about six months to a year in
duration to mitigate a more immediate
threat. Removal activity in 1991, ’93, ’95,
and 2000 also allowed EPA to address
risks and manage building demolitions,
fence installations, and contaminated soil
removal from residences near the site.
Cheryl Sprague: It's one thing if you stay
on your site but if you have to come into
their space they’re very afraid. We
took a lot of time to work through those
fears. One resident, he not only lived next
to the property, had contamination in his
property, in his house, he worked at the
site so actually had is blood tested and
had seen low levels in his blood.
Narration: Fletcher’s Paint was listed on
the National Priorities List or NPL in 1989.
The NPL is another name for the
Superfund Program. Only the worst sites
of pollution in American are ranked on the
NPL and funds are available through
Congress to clean up these sites.
Drew Hoffman: There's a number of
entities that must come together in
agreement to list a site for NPL.
Narration: In a lot of cases, a state discovers
the site and assesses the magnitude of the
problem, and if it is deemed necessary, the
state will refer the site to EPA and will
request the site to be ranked for the
National Priorities List. In order for a site to
be listed, it must meet certain hazardous
ranking criteria. There are many factors
involved in this decision including the types
and levels of contamination and their
potential impacts. Ideally, the proposed NPL
listing is supported by the governor of the
state, the municipality the site is located in
and the community members there.
Mike Janinski: Once a site is listed the
typical Superfund process will involve a lot
field work to sample for the contaminates
that may have been disposed of there;
surface water and sediment sampling, soil
sampling, air sampling. That information is
used to compile a document we call the
remedial investigation, which summarizes
the contamination. As part of that
remedial investigation we do a risk assessment.
Rick Sugatt: In the original scoping you try
to figure out what receptors, they’re
called, what people or animals will be
exposed to the chemicals. We were
concerned about cancer and non-cancer
effects of the PCBs and some solvents as
well, whether there were long-term
chronic effects of these chemicals in
trespassers, child residents, adult
residents, construction workers. The
ecological receptors were primarily fish in
the river. So, we looked at the effects on
the animals themselves in the river and on
wildlife or humans who might eat the fish.
And so, that scopes out the risk assessment.
Cheryl Sprague: So, when they went out of
business in 1991 they left behind a large
building full of hundreds and hundreds of
drums and miscellaneous materials.
Because it was both a paint manufacturer
you could have an area of lead or
antimony or chromium in one area of the
site, you might have pesticides in another
from that business. We never knew what
the sample would show us because we
never knew what may have been disposed
of in a different area.
Rick Sugatt: The remedial investigation
obtains the data. The risk assessor uses
the data to calculate the risks. Then the
engineers get involved in how much soil to
take out, what is the method to remediate.
Narration: The remedial investigation
serves as the basis for the feasibility study.
Mike Janinski: The feasibility study will
evaluate the various options that are
potentially viable for cleaning up the site,
whether it’s soil, or groundwater or
sediment. That feasibility study then
provides us the basis to propose a cleanup
strategy that we have public comment on,
typically 30 days, and then we write our
clean up decision or our Record of
Decision that documents how to clean up the site.
Narration: As the cleanup process
progresses, EPA is tasked with other
functions that move in concert to the
cleanup. Part of EPA’s job on Superfund sites
is to ensure that polluters pay for the
remediation of the site, which is done
through EPA enforcement. EPA identifies
the parties that are considered responsible
for the contamination under the law, and
asks those parties to perform the
cleanup. At the Fletcher’s Paint Superfund
site EPA identified General Electric as a
potentially responsible party, but GE
contested. After the United States filed a
lawsuit against GE, the company was found
by the Court to be a liable party.
Cheryl Sprague: The second phase of the
investigations, the predesign
investigations, that's pretty discreet.
Instead of taking a few samples that
shows high levels of contamination, you're
taking 3800 samples to look at very
discrete depths of contamination, “where
is it pooling up?” You're looking for how
the data would respond to the cleanup.
Mike Janinski: Basically, we try to do pre-
design work to design the remedy that
was selected and ultimately clean it up
and perform the cleanup.
Drew Hoffman: The site is composed of
two areas: The Mill Street site and the Elm
Street site. Both sites are in active
remedial action currently for the removal
of contaminated soils, contaminated with
PCBs being transported offsite. Some
areas are going all the way to bedrock and
other areas are shallower.
Narration: The site is evaluated on an on-
going basis for remedy protectiveness to
make sure it still protects public health
and the environment.
Jim Brown: During the early stages of the
soil excavation we were detecting very
high levels of PCBs in the air - much higher
than the project action levels that were
established. So, we worked with the PRP,
General Electric, and their contractor to
figure out ways that we could adjust the
way we were managing the site.
We finally wound up with developing a
new plan. Part of that plan required
additional engineering controls. Some of
those controls included spraying vapor
suppressing foam on the site. We also
increased the amount of air monitoring
we were doing and the amount of air
monitoring stations that were needed on
the project.
Narration: The community is encouraged
to participate in the cleanup process and
engaging the community is a focus of the
cleanup team.
Cheryl Sprague: We’re going to start off
tonight with a quick introduction. My
name is Cheryl Sprague, I work with the
Environmental Protection Agency. I’m the
Remedial Project Manager for the Fletcher
Paint Superfund site. With me tonight is
my boss, Chief of the New Hanpshire,
Rhode Island Superfund section, Mike Jasinski…
Jim Murphy: The work couldn’t really be
done without interacting with the
community and on this particular site we
were literally within six inches of people’s
front doors, front steps. And that’s where
the excavation was happening. I think the
community involvement coordinator
besides dealing with the community is
also intensely deal with the team. We had
our project manager, we met regularly,
and one of the standing agenda items,
one of the most important ones is, “what
are we telling people? How are we
interacting with them?” He understood
that he was not going to be able to do his
job without, essentially, talking to people
almost every day.
Narration: As the site gets clean the view
of Keyes Park and the Souhegan River has
the town looking at the space differently.
Jim Brown: And the town, who had always
had an interest in passive recreational use
but nothing fancy, has now become very
energized in figuring out how to really reuse
the site in a way that benefits the
community and reconnects a portion of
the community to the Souhegan River.
RuthAnn Sherman: I know the city of
Milford had been upset and impatient,
understandably, over the years and now is
very happy with the work that's being
done. Since our enforcement efforts were
successful, GE has been doing a great job
in cleaning up the site and doing it fairly
quickly. It's amazing to visit the site and
see all the work that's going on.
Mike Janinski: Right now, we’re digging up
thousands of cubic yards of PCB
contaminated material at Fletcher’s and
eventually this site will finally get cleaned
up. That’s why I joined EPA, I felt like I
could contribute to New England by going
through this process. To get a site
investigated, studied, cleaned up, and put
back into use somehow.
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Narration: The former Fletcher's Paint Superfund
site has become a public park for the
citizens of Milford, New Hampshire.
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