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Environmentalists question dollar amount, methods of AVX set
The New Bedford Standard-Times
By ARIEL WITTENBERG
October 19, 2012 1:06 AM
NEW BEDFORD — Environmental activists are questioning whether the EPA's $366 million settlement with Aerovox's successor, AVX, will be enough money to rid the harbor of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs).
The city and the state "came down here and had a big hoopla about how it's the biggest settlement from a corporation," said Hands Across the River President Edwin Rivera. "But you know it's not enough to cover it."
Calculations on the EPA's website from 2010 estimate the cleanup costs of New Bedford Harbor to be much higher than the settlement amount.
Without using Confined Aquatic Devices, or CAD cells, the 2010 numbers estimate the cost at $536 million over seven years, including inflation. With CAD cells, the estimate is $422 million, including inflation, also over seven years.
"The EPA needs to explain to me how they got there," Rivera said. "They dropped $60 million from the price tag."
Representatives for the EPA said they stand by the settlement amount and that the $366 million will cover "over 90 percent" of harbor remediations; they estimate the total cost of remediations at $401 million.
EPA spokesman Jim Murphy said that prior to 2011, the agency used a different formula for calculating the cost in "feasibility studies" that did not include information specific to New Bedford Harbor.
Those estimates, Murphy said, were calculated in accordance with an EPA standard that allows for a 30-50 percent margin of error.
The $401 million cost estimate, however, is calculated "based on actual costs experienced to date in New Bedford Harbor."
"Since ... 1998, we have gained both additional knowledge of the extent of the contamination and the site-specific costs of various cleanup activities. We have confidence in our cost estimate's higher degree of accuracy," Murphy said.
Buzzards Bay Coalition President Mark Rasmussen said he is unhappy that the settlement money will be used for CAD cells — specially engineered holes dug in the harbor floor to hold contamination — instead of off-site disposal.
The latest EPA estimates put remediation costs at $393 million using CAD cells, not including inflation, according to Murphy. Without CAD cells, those estimates rise to $464 million.
"I don't know why you wouldn't spend the extra money to do it right," Rasmussen said. "This settlement is final. We are walking away from the last checkbook on this other than the taxpayers'."
Murphy said CAD cells have been used at other Superfund sites.
"That's how the CAD cells came to be considered here, because they have been used ... to safely dispose of many forms of contamination in the aquatic environment," he said.
The EPA is required to consider cost as part of the regulations for dealing with a Superfund site.
"Cost is one of our nine Superfund criteria," he said. "While some people have understandably said that they would rather have the dredged contaminated sediment out of here, others have expressed their support of a CAD cell in the lower harbor to speed up the cleanup."
Rasmussen and Rivera also questioned the data the EPA used to determine the extent to which areas of the harbor are cleaned.
Currently, the EPA is following directions set up in a 1998 "Record of Decision" that dictate how different areas of the harbor should be cleaned depending on the use of adjacent lands.
For example, the shoreline with little public access should be cleaned to 50 parts PCBs per million parts water, while shoreline that borders recreational and residential areas must respectively be cleaned to 25 and one parts per million.
Rasmussen questioned whether the calculations for the settlement took into account the way in which the river's shoreline had evolved since 1998.
"We have areas, like by the Victoria Riverside Apartments and the Cliftex Lofts, where all of that is now residential," Rasmussen said. "We need to know if that's going to be cleaned to the one part per million standard they themselves laid out."
Murphy told The Standard-Times that the EPA conducts a review of the harbor remediation every five years. The last review was in 2010 and, Murphy said, it "acknowledges the changing shoreline and says that we will evaluate whether we will need to put a deed restriction on that area or if we will need to clean it to the one part per million standard for shoreline areas bordering residential areas."
Up until this point, the EPA's cleanup has focused on subtidal dredging and not on the shoreline.
"When we address the shoreline intertidal areas, we will look at the current land use and evaluate the appropriate measures to protect human health," Murphy said.
Murphy stressed that last week's AVX settlement was "a cash-out settlement" and "does not affect the cleanup," saying it was the Record of Decision, and modifications to that, that dictates EPA methods. But Rasmussen said he isn't buying it.
"I know they say the cleanup isn't a part of the settlement talks but I don't see how it can't be," he said. "They are setting a price on a product, so my question is what's the quality of the product we are getting for $366 million?"
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