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| Environmental contamination in Framingham MA |
In perhaps what only can be called insane
irony, a chemical processing company in Framingham, Massachusetts, that is part
of a family of companies billed as a "fully permitted, state-of-the-art
hazardous waste management" group, has allegedly been involved with a
plume of contamination in the Leland Street area of that city.
General Chemical Corp. is one of five
companies in the Clean Venture/Cycle Chem group busily providing environmental
cleanup services. General Chemical Corp. (by the way, there are several
companies using this name), is a Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, or
RCRA, Part "B" treatment, storage and disposal company, so it can
handle some pretty toxic items including solvents, polychlorinated biphenyls,
acids, wastewater sludge, pesticides and even metal-bearing waste, according to
this report
in The MetroWest Daily News.
Because this issue has been long
standing, the state's Department of Environmental Protection ordered General
Chemical to set aside $1.27 million toward the cleanup or it will have to stop
importing waste and get rid of whatever waste it is processing, within a month.
Previously, the company was fined twice for violations of hazardous waste
management regulations and the Framingham Board of Health had inspected the
plant to find barrels of chemicals not properly stored, evidence the company
had pumped contaminated water to the outdoors and discovered a defective
laboratory floor, according to this report
at Boston.com's Framingham section. In the wake of these findings the DEP fined
the company $30,000.
Local residents have not been too
enamored with General Chemical either. As the contamination spread, the company
purchased homes in its wake, but the biggest rub continues to be the potential
effects on a school next door. While Framingham health officials don't think
the contamination threatens students and staff, some have been concerned about
the company's operations for about three years.
Clean Venture/Cycle Chem, the group that
General Chemical is affiliated with, has been involved with the Environmental
Protection Agency in assessing responses from companies that have environmental
incidents. For example, it was named in a letter to
Chesapeake Energy Corporation as being a potential reviewer of Chesapeake's
response to a "release, or threat of release, of hazardous substances,
pollutants or contaminants into the environment from (its) facility located in
Canton, Leroy Township, Bradford County, PA." This particular incident was
related to Chesapeake's hydraulic fracturing operations at a gas well there.
Clean Venture/Cycle Chem is also listed as a reviewer on a standard
instruction published by the EPA that references hydraulic fracturing.
The company has also been on the other
side of EPA's interests as it settled with it to the tune of about $141,000 for
its contribution to a mercury refining Superfund Site. That site was in Guilderland
and Colonie, New York, and its share was in the top ten of more than 400
settled amounts related to that site, according to the EPA's records.
The cleanup effort that contribution helped to fund was to address soil,
sediment and groundwater contaminated by mercury from the 1950s to 1998 by the
Mercury Refining Company. It recovered, refined and marketed mercury from
batteries, thermometers, pressure regulators and dental amalgam. Before 1980,
the waste from its operations was simply dumped over an embankment and as storm
water drained from the site it carried mercury into Patroon Creek.
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