6 In Salem, Massachusett:s * OTHhR: 7There' no questios n abou itt . 3 An mentioned the last tim wee...

1 UNITED STATES ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY

2 REGION I Boston, Massachusetts

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4 * Supe: fund Records Center

5 IN THE MATTER OF: * SHE: *)6\<n A(rt<> Salem Acres Site * BREAK: O,

6 In: Salem, Massachusetts * OTHhR: *

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9 ADMINISTRATIVE HEARING

10 VOLUME I DATE: July 15, 1992.

11 TIME: 7:30 p.m. PLACE: Town Hall, Salem, Massachusetts.

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22 COPLEY COURT REPORTING 101 Tremont Street

23 Boston, Massachusetts 02108 (617) 423-5841

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COPLEY COURT REPORTING

1 APPEARANCES:

2 U.S. ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY

3 (By: Diane Ready) Office of External Programs

4 John F. Kennedy Building Boston, Massachusetts 02203

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6 ALSO PRESENT: Paula Fitzsimmons, Hearing Officer

7 Joseph N. DeCola, Medial Project Manager, EPA Theresa Carroll, Program Assistant

8 Teresa Kirsch, DEP Jan Naparstek, DEP Branch Chief

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C O P L E Y C O U R T R E P O R T I N G

1 HEARING OFFICER: I think it's time

2 for us to get started. We're a few minutes late.

3 First of all, we apologize for getting started

4 late. We had a little problem getting out of

5 Boston with the Tall Ships down there.

6 For those of you who were not here

7 last time, my name is Paula Fitzsimmons. I'm from

8 the EPA. I'm Chief of the Massachusetts Super

9 Fund Section. I'll be the hearing officer this

10 evening.

11 The purpose of this meeting is for

12 us to take public comment on the Salem Acres

13 proposed plan. After I go over how the meeting

14 will be run, there will be a short presentation by

15 Joseph DeCola, who is the medial project manager

16 from EPA. And as you can see, we have a

17 stenographer in front.

18 Theresa Carroll, also from the EPA,

19 is walking around to see if anyone would like to

20 read comments into the record. If you do, after

21 Joe's presentation, we ask that you come up front,

22 state your name. If it's a difficult name, please

23 spell it.

24 Also give us your affiliation, if


1 you're representing anyone or if you're from the

2 town or something, please do that. If at any time

3 you're speaking too quickly, we may have to ask

4 you to slow down so we can keep up.

5 As I said, we will take public

6 comment. This is a public hearing. As a hearing,

7 we will not be responding to those comments that

8 we receive tonight.

9 What we will do is, as we discussed

10 at the last meeting, we will take those comments,

11 we will look at them, and we will take them into

12 consideration in our decision as to what the

13 cleanup remedy for the Salem Acre site will be.

14 We expect that decision to be made

15 and to be published in a document that we call a

16 Record of Decision in the fall, probably late, mid

17 to late September.

18 I introduced a few people who were

19 here, but I'll just go through the list of

20 government representatives who are here. As I

21 said, Joe DeCola is the medial project manager

22 from EPA. Next to him is Jay Naparstek from the

23 Massachusetts Department of Environmental

24 Protection.


1 Next to him is Teresa Kirsch, also

2 from the Massachusetts Department of Environmental

3 Protection. Next to her is Diane Ready, from EPA

4 Community Relations Office, and to my left is

5 Theresa Carroll from the EPA. She's a program

6 assistant.

7 At this point, just to let the

8 people know what the time frames are of our public

9 comment period, the official comment period

10 started on June 25th and we will run to July

11 25th.

12 If you choose not to make comments

13 tonight into the record and you know anyone who

14 would like to make comments into the record, they

15 must be postmarked by July 25th to be considered

16 and mailed to Joe DeCola at the EPA. If anybody

17 needs a copy of that address, we have it so you

18 write it down. We'll give you a copy of the

19 proposed plan. Joe's address is in there.

20 Tonight, as we talked about when we

21 were here a few weeks ago, this is the informal

22 public hearing. So with that, I'm going to turn

23 it over to Joe, and he'll give you a short

24 synopsis of what EPA's proposed plan is to clean


1 up the Salem Acres site.

2 MR. DECOLA: I went to the store

3 today to buy one of these magic markers to write

4 on overheads; now I can't find it. Here it is.

5 Okay.

6 I'm going to take about five or ten

7 minutes and go over ten overheads that I have,

8 which sort of summarize what we have done at the

9 site in terms of the sampling effort that we've

10 made and the analyses and what those showed and

11 how we've come up with the proposed plan for the

12 Salem Acres site, which is, as many of you know, a

13 fixation process using fly ash and soil to fix the

14 contaminated sludges and soils on site and then

15 take those off site to a localized landfill, local

16 landfill.

17 This is an overview of the general

18 location of Salem Acres and this road right here

19 is Route 107, Highland Avenue. And it's about a

20 quarter of a mile in off Highland Avenue on

21 Barcelona Avenue.

22 The site, itself, is comprised of

23 about 230 acres or so but the actual waste

24 disposal area is occurring only in about 13 acres


1 of the overall site. And this is a diagram that

2 shows those 13 acres.

3 Just to orient you, the end of

4 Barcelona Avenue is right here and there's a gate

5 here. There's wetland areas both to the east and

6 west and north. And there are a number of

7 different waste disposal areas that we have

8 identified.

9 One is an old landfill. It's about

10 a half an acre in size, an old fly-ash pile,

11 again, about a half acre in size. And two

12 disposal areas, which we've designated as DAI and

13 DA2 in the proposed plan. You may come across

14 that designation.

15 There are a series of eight lagoons

16 in DAI and DA2. And also associated with these

17 disposal areas, there are some soil areas that

18 surround the site. And they have received or

19 there was contamination dropped there during the

20 operations in these pits.

21 I might mention in '87, EPA did an

22 emergency removal action that covered those,

23 dewatered the lagoons and covered the pits with

24 high-density polyethylene. Plastic, basically.


1 Let's take a look at what we

2 sampled. We looked at air and we looked at

3 groundwater levels. We put seven wells. We

4 looked at private supplies. We looked at surface

5 water and sediments in the marsh area.

6 We also looked at sludges and soils

7 on the site, and we did an ecological survey,

8 also, that looked at birds, fish, and turtles.

9 And then we took the water out of the marshes,

10 brought it to the laboratory and exposed it to

11 different organisms and these are our results.

12 What we found, basically, is that in

13 all of the areas we looked, except for the

14 disposal areas and the soil areas around those,

15 that we had relatively low levels of

16 contamination.

17 And groundwater we had leveling

18 below what we referenced to as MCL's or what that

19 stands for is Maximum Contaminant Levels. So the

20 water that we did find on site and surface water

21 in the wetlands did not merit remediation, in our

2 2 opin ion.

23 They were all so low that we are

24 going to concentrate remediation or we're


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1 recommending remediation be concentrated in these

2 disposal areas. And those are the areas shown,

3 again, in that off-green color, that yuck green.

4 And we then took a look at those

5 results and evaluated that against these criteria

6 in each case, each Super Fund site. Once that

7 data is available, that information on the site,

8 the assessment is based on that sampling, which

9 became available in June this year.

10 We then look at this criteria that

11 we've got and right now we're at about, I'd say,

12 seven, step seven and a half. And I say seven and

13 a half because we have been working with the

14 state, Jay Naparstek and Teresa Kirsch, right

15 along in this project.

16 Even though we don't have formal

17 state acceptance at this point, we had been

18 working with them and developing a plan along with

19 them. The state reserves their acceptance until

20 after the community is heard.

21 So based on that criteria, we

22 evaluated a series of nine alternatives. And one

23 we picked is the sludge fixation/off-site

24 disposal. And you will notice that the price for


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1 that is a hefty $9.123 million. And that's a lot

2 of money. There's no question about it.

3 And as I mentioned the last time we

4 were here, it is a lot but when you look at the

5 overall price or average price of a Super Fund

6 cleanup around, across the United States, it's

7 between 20 and $25 million. So this is a pretty

8 reasonable cost. We think, anyway.

9 I'm not really going to go over

10 these other items. Just, suffice it to say, that

11 we evaluated all of these and this is the one that

12 we're recommending, sludge fixation/off-site

13 disposal. We have a backup to that, which is the

14 capping option.

15 I would add that I'm not going to

16 entertain any questions on these slides, but I

17 will be available after the formal presentation by

18 the public to answer any question that anyone may

19 have. And I'll stay as long as it takes to answer

20 those questions. Jay Naparstek from DEP will also

21 be available to answer questions along with Teresa

22 Kirsch. Okay?

23 So let's take a little bit closer

24 look at the preferred alternatives. Soil fixation


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1 with fly ash and soil. What is fly ash anyway?

2 Some of you might be asking yourself that. Well,

3 it's the end product of combustion from a power

4 plant.

5 For example, a coal-fire power plant

6 would produce an awful lot of fly ash, and we'll

7 use that fly ash, combine it with the organic

8 material in those sludge pits and then take it off

9 site at a local landfill.

10 And this alternative is based on

11 several assumptions. These assumptions are that

12 we can make the waste nontoxic and nonflammable

13 because the waste is toxic and flammable, right?

14 Now, although by a margin, it's not

15 highly flammable and it's not highly toxic but,

16 nonetheless, it is what we consider to be toxic

17 and flammable. So this process, we hope, will

18 render the material nontoxic, nonflammable.

19 And we also hope that a local

20 landfill will be available to accept it. If we

21 have to ship this material to, say, Canada or

22 Northern New Hampshire or someplace in Carolina,

23 then the cost becomes prohibitive and we probably

24 would go to our fallback or would go to our


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1 fallback position, which is on-site cap. And thii

2 has a 4.4 million-dollar price tag on it.

3 And that may seem like why don't we

4 just use this option? It's cheaper. But when you

5 evaluate the two options, one gets rid of the

6 material, takes all the material off site. It's a

7 permanent solution. This leaves the material on

8 site. It's not a permanent solution and, in fact,

9 it requires monitoring for the long term.

10 This is the final slide I'd like to

11 or overhead I'd like to show you, which is kind of

12 a flow diagram. And we start out with our

13 intended process for lagoon sludge fixation.

14 And this summer and fall, probably,

15 we're going to be doing some, "we," meaning South

16 Essex Sewerage District. They're the only

17 responsible party to date. Although we've

18 notified other potential, responsible parties,

19 they are doing the study, and they will be doing

20 treatability studies this summer.

21 We have notified other potential

22 responsible parties but so far we've been working

23 with them. They're the only ones that have agreed

24 to do the studies' to date. If it passes and a


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1 local landfill is available, no problem. We have

2 our solution. If it fails or if a local landfill

3 is not available, then we fall back to that

4 on-site cap alternative.

5 Now, we do groundwater monitoring

6 associated with that to make sure that we don't

7 have any contamination in the groundwater. If for

8 some reason we should detect contamination, then

9 we would go back and have to remove the cap and

10 treat that sludge. If not, then we would continue

11 with our groundwater monitoring just to make sure

12 the cap maintains its integrity.

13 And so in a nutshell, that's it.

14 And at this point in time, what I would like to do

15 is open the floor to the public for any comments

16 you may wish to make.

17 HEARING OFFICER: Right now I only

18 have one person who said they wanted to make

19 comment into the record at this time. What we,

20 generally, do is give each person ten minutes. We

21 don't really have a time pressure now.

22 And if there's anybody in the course

23 of this comment who would like to make comments

24 into the record, if you could just see Theresa and


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1 give her your name, I will give you an idea of

2 about when ten minutes is up. And our commentor

3 is Mr. 0'Leary.

4 MR. O'LEARY: Yes. For the record,

5 my name is Leonard F. O'Leary. I live at 31

6 Barcelona Avenue. I am the closest abutter to the

7 site and also a city counselor. I live there with

8 my wife and my mother-in-law.

9 I see already, Joe, that you have

10 set ground rules for tonight that there's no

11 quest ions.

12 MR. DECOLA: After the meeting.

13 MR. O'LEARY: Why isn't there

14 questions for the meeting?

15 HEARING OFFICER: The way we

16 generally hold a hearing is that there are no

17 questions. It allows us to get everybody's

18 comments into the record; that's how most hearings

19 are held.

20 MR. O'LEARY: Okay.

21 HEARING OFFICER: As Joe said, we

22 will be more than happy to stay around and answer

23 people's questions after we close the official

24 hear ing.


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1 MR. O'LEARY: Okay. Because at the

2 last meeting in June when I was here, I had a lot

3 of questions and I had told you people that I

4 would go around the neighborhood and try to find

5 out what their problems are; what they thought

6 about it, the people that got the sheets.

7 And when I left the meeting, I asked

8 you people if you were going to notify the

9 neighbors. I gave you a book. Nobody has

10 notified any neighbors.

11 MS. READY: Sir, just for the

12 record, 162 copies did go out to all the names

13 that you sent. If there was a problem where they

14 weren't received in time, I can apologize for

15 that. But we processed 162 names and sent copies

16 to everybody on your list, just to let you know.

17 MR. O'LEARY: Okay. Nobody has

18 received them.

19 MS. READY: They went out last week.


21 MS. READY: I'm sorry if they didn't

22 get out in time.

23 MR. O'LEARY: So that was the key

24 thing. And, also, I thought that you were going


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1 to put another little thing in the paper like you

2 normally do, the EPA. Nothing was in the

3 newspaper. Okay?

4 The other — well, it's not a

5 question but where is the representative of the

6 Mass. Department of Health? Isn't she supposed to

7 be here?

8 MR. NAPARSTEK: No. She's not

9 supposed to be here. There really isn't any

10 reason for her to be here.

11 HEARING OFFICER: Excuse me. As the

12 hearing officer, I'm really responsible for having

13 this hearing run as a hearing.


15 HEARING OFFICER: You can ask the

16 questions, and I'll ask the people from the EPA

17 not to interrupt, so we can get people's comments,

18 so we can wait, comment, and use them in our

19 decision. So I ask the people not to respond and

20 let Mr. O'Leary speak into the record.

21 MR. O'LEARY: Since I'm the only

22 person that is speaking tonight, and I did have

23 some questions, and I just would like to run down

24 some of them even for the record.


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1 We all know, all right, and being

2 the closest abutter, that we'd like to see the

3 hazardous waste gone. Okay? But from the last

4 meeting and to this meeting, I haven't heard the

5 EPA or anybody say that they have treated the same

6 type of soil that's next to my house in another

7 site the way you're going to treat this. You

8 haven't treated another site like you're going to

9 treat this site. Okay?

10 It hasn't been perfected. From what

11 you're saying here is if you go down and you fail,

12 you're going to cap it to the 4.4 million. That

13 is the question of a lot of my constituents, a lot

14 of my residents that border around. They are

15 afraid of the guality of air.

16 If you do open up the pit, what's

17 going to happen? Nobody knows. As they said,

18 they know of no other site and it wasn't presented

19 to us that it has worked.

20 We all know hazardous waste should

21 be removed and there's no question about it. But

22 if it hasn't been removed from other sites, what

23 says that it can be removed here and how far down

24 do we have to go?


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1 The other questions that were raise*.

2 is what route — if the cleanup goes into effect,

3 what route will be taken because there's a lot of

4 residents around that site. I had questioned

5 that, I think, the last time and there was no

6 answer from anybody in this body.

7 Would it be going down Barcelona

8 Avenue? Would it be coining out Marlborough Road?

9 Would it be coming out to Peabody? We have no

10 answer to that question.

11 The other question that I have is

12 when it's removed, will the site still be

13 monitored and for how long? Will the 13 or so

14 acres remain on a list to be monitored to make

15 sure that there's no hazardous waste still into

16 the ground or surrounding it? And I'm only

17 talking about the 13 acres.

18 The EPA does not have to go along

19 with any zoning or wetlands protection acts or any

20 acts, I believe, even on the capping. As I had

21 asked before, how big of a buffer zone do we

22 have — do the people have if it is capped? And

23 that was not answered at the last meeting.

24 These are serious questions. These


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1 are questions that people are concerned about.

2 And from what you people are saying, you're not

3 going to take any questions. You just want

4 comments on whether we want 1 through 7 or 7A or

5 7B.

6 As it stands now, if everything is

7 going the way it is going tonight or even from the

8 last time with the question and answering period,

9 then I think probably the neighbors will take the

10 capping and don't disturb anything because they

11 have no answers to anything.

12 I realize if you go to remove the

13 hazardous material, you have to do a trial test.

14 And the test hasn't been taken yet, from what I

15 understand here. So how can we make a decision?

16 How can the neighborhood really make

17 a decision on whether to remove it, to cap it, to

18 go for the $28 million, to go for the $45 million

19 or to go for the $4 million and cap it?

20 I know there was questions with some

21 of the residents which was brought up by Jay

22 Naparstek at the last meeting on development -

23 well, I don't think that's a key issue here. I

24 think the key issue would be the health and


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1 welfare of the residents of the ward.

2 The other question some of the

3 people asked is: Who's going to pay for all of

4 this? And if it is South Essex Sewerage, is it

5 going to be Salem and Peabody? And when and if

6 you do take out the material with the ash, where

7 will it be trucked? We don't even have that

8 answer.

9 So how could any resident or any

10 member of this community make a statement, okay,

11 of removal, whether it be 7, 7A, or take 7B and

12 say go ahead, EPA, remove it? And if you can't

13 remove it, then just cap it and leave it there. :

14 don't — I don't think anybody can do that, Joe.

15 And I, for one, couldn't.

16 I mean, you know, I would want it

17 removed. I mean, you know, I'm the closest

18 abutter, but I would just say cap it and leave it

19 there. That's my feeling. Thank you for your

2 0 time.

21 HEARING OFFICER: Is there anyone

22 else here that would like to make a comment into

23 the record?

24 MS. GEORGE: My name is Jane


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1 George. I live at 45 Ravenna Ave., and I agree

2 with Mr. O'Leary about the testing. If it has

3 never been done before, how do we know? I'm

4 concerned about the air quality.

5 I don't want to come back in ten

6 years and be a statistic for the EPA with my

7 unborn child here. I did move on to Ravenna Ave.

8 after becoming pregnant with my second child and

9 everything is fine but who knows?

10 I agree with Mr. O'Leary that until

11 some information is presented to us that this has

12 been done before at similar sites, I don't want

13 the cap off and let all of these contaminants into

14 the air.

15 And I'm concerned. I don't want to

16 breathe. I said to my husband, "Don't kill that

17 fly." I'm nervous they're all contaminated now.

18 I'm really nervous, and I think until they can

19 come up with some real information, we should cap

20 it and don't touch it. I don't want to touch it.

21 HEARING OFFICER: Thank you. Is

22 there anyone else?

23 (Pause . )

24 HEARING OFFICER: Well, we'll


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1 officially close the hearing. And as I said, we

2 will stay around if people want to come up and

3 speak to people individually. We will be more

4 than happy to answer your questions. So I thank

5 you all for coming tonight. It's one of the

6 shortest hearings I've been to yet.

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8 8:00 p.m.)

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(Whereupon the hearing concluded at


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1 C E R T I F I C A T E

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4COMMONWEALTH OF MASSACHUSETTS

ESSEX, SS.

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I, Susan F. Lewey, a Notary Public and

Certified Shorthand Reporter duly commissioned and

qualified in and for the Commonwealth of

Massachusetts, do hereby certify that Pages 1

through 24 are a true and accurate transcription

of my stenographic notes taken in the foregoing

matter taken to the best of my skill and ability.

14 IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set

15 my hand and Notarial Seal this _&^_[__Q_ day of

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-Joi ,, , 1992.

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24My Commission Expires:

May 10. 1996

— A SUSAN F. LEWEY

CSR/ Notary Public

.._ ^ )


6 In Salem, Massachusett:s * OTHhR: 7There' no questios n abou itt . 3 An mentioned the last tim wee...

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