Neponset River from Hyde Park to Dorchester could become federal Superfund site

The State House News Service reports the national EPA yesterday formally projected making the Neponset River, from Dana Avenue successful Hyde Park to Dorchester Lower Mills a designated Superfund hazardous-waste and cleanup tract owed to the ample measurement of PCBs successful stream silt and the difficulties of trying to recoup costs from dozens of sites liable for the contamination connected 1 of the nation's oldest concern waterways.

In its connection to designate the little Neponset, the EPA says:

Historically, galore mills were established on the Lower Neponset River successful the towns of Dorchester, Milton, Hyde Park, and Mattapan, utilizing dams to make powerfulness initially to crook mill grinding wheels and aboriginal to run the ample concern mills. ...

Nearly 60,000 cubic yards of PCB-contaminated sediments reside on the Lower Neponset River, down the dams, successful the Braided Channel country and adjacent the confluence of Mother Brook. The contamination threatens the groundwater which is simply a imaginable root of nationalist drinking h2o for much than 40,000 radical wrong 4 miles of the site. The Neponset River is simply a fishery. Although the authorities has issued a food advisory owed to the beingness of PCBs and dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT), determination is grounds that sportfishing and quality depletion is inactive taking place. The authorities has besides classified this information of the stream arsenic impaired for recreational usage owed to the beingness of PCBs, Escherichia Coli (E. Coli), and Enterococcus.

One root of contaminants successful the Neponset utilized to beryllium the Mother Brook - the oldest canal successful the US, dating to 1639 - which joins the Neponset conscionable earlier Dana Avenue successful Hyde Park. But successful 2006 and 2007, the authorities unopen the brook, which starts astatine a dam connected the Charles River successful Dedham, and removed contaminated sediment. The enactment wasn't afloat completed until 2009.

The state's efforts to get landowners to wage for astatine slightest immoderate of the enactment connected the comparatively abbreviated brook illustrates the imaginable issues the EPA could look successful assessing and collecting outgo for enactment on the Neponset: It took immoderate nine years of ineligible action successful national tribunal to find conscionable which of present-day landowners were liable for which percent of contamination successful the brook, portion of which progressive tracing the concern histories for properties that were agelong since converted to different uses, including a supermarket and a charter school.