PCB cleanup begins at Lake Cochituate
Environmental Issues - July 29, 2010
Metro West Daily News reports that contractors have started removing sediment contaminated with PCBs from Lake Cochituate at Natick, Massachusetts. The contamination was left by an accident at the Soldier Systems Center 30 years ago.
The PCBs were found in the section of Lake Cochituate just to the east of Natick Labs. They came from a transformer explosion in 1980 and got into the lake through a storm drain, said Jim Connolly, restoration programme manager for Natick Labs.
Charter Environmental of Boston is handling the cleanup, with dredging work done by subcontractor Inner Space Dredging of Maine. The Defense Department is picking up the US$2.8 million tab, Connolly said. Connolly said work will run through September 7th.
Three sections of the lake will be dredged, Connolly said. Several hundred samples have been taken over the years, he said, and the areas just off the shore of Natick Labs will be dredged. "We are only taking the top six inches of sediment," Connolly said. "The exception of that is at the (storm drain) outfall, where it will go deeper."
The clean-up was triggered when authorities found unsafe levels of PCBs in fish caught in Lake Cochituate. Kaltofen, an environmental engineer, said the fish are his biggest concern.
"More information about the clean-up project is available at: www.epa.gov/region1/superfund/sites/naticklab/.
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