Contaminated pile looking towards Applewood Retirement CommunityUPDATE 9:15 AM: Perhaps the only thing more scary than the following story is the fact that it's probably perfectly legal. My reliable town offical source wants readers to know the Department of Environmental Protection has different "handling requirements of this material from an agricultural by-product use vs. non agricultural."
Of course the way a human body reacts to the presence of the dangerous substances doesn't change depending on whether that exposure was caused by agricultural uses vs. an industrial smelting plant.
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In South Amherst lead and arsenic go together like smoke and fire.
Commercial apple orchards operated by Atkins farms (founded 1887) and original competitor Wentworth farms needed an effective insecticide, easy to apply in bulk, to protect their cash crop. They found it in lead arsenate and used many tons of it over a couple generations until the popular pesticide was banned by the EPA in 1988.
Today these old apple orchards still contain the hazardous chemical cocktail bonded to the soil. Recently controversy arose when the town cut a deal with Baltazar Contractors, who won the $6,060,220 bid to construct two Atkins corner roundabouts, to dispose of 6,000 tons of lead arsenic contaminated soil in the old landfill for a tidy six-figure sum in dump fees, which the town would then cover over with three feet of clean fill to satisfy a DEP order to regrade the sagging landfill cap.
Neighbors--already mobilized to fight a 4.75 megawatt solar array farm at the site (which requires a level terrain)--complained bitterly about the contaminated soil coming to their backyards, and even though the DEP deemed it safe (with many conditions attached), the town scuttled plans to accept it in the landfill, thus leaving the dirt in uncovered piles adjacent to one of the busiest businesses in Amherst.
Sovereign Builders is concurrently constructing a spacious warehouse for Atkins immediately behind the popular store, which is of course located in an old orchard. I took a soil sample (one of three) from the large uncovered pile of dirt that this private sector project has generated off West Bay Road currently towering over the landscape only a couple yards from Atkins Market and Applewood Retirement Community (built on 10 acres of former apple orchard.)
The UMass Soil and Plant Tissue Testing Lab found 427 ppm lead in the pile; unfortunately they do not not screen for arsenic. Lead arsenate contains one atom of aresenic for every atom of lead, and as an atom of lead is 2.8 times as heavy as an atom of arsenic, if only lead arsenate is present, a soil containing 427 ppm of lead will contain 153 ppm of arsenic. Arsenic levels above 20 ppm are a cause for concern.
According to the town the known contaminated soil from the road roundabout reconstruction project tested at 46 milligrams/kilogram for arsenic, and if my sample is from the same batch, 273 ppm for lead.
Twenty years ago when Applewood was constructed on a former Atkins orchard the excavated soil was taken to an expensive special handling facility, as was soil from the Eric Carle Museum construction project ten years ago.
Even if no arsenic is present (and that seems unlikely) the lead content alone requires special attention and handling. According to the UMass soil lab "If estimated total lead levels are above 300 ppm, young children and pregnant woman should avoid soil contact."
And with hot, dry, windy summer weather fast approaching, one large pile of bare dirt could send contaminated dust blowing in the wind.
Contaminated pile looking toward Atkins Country MarketUMass Soil Lab analysis ( see "Atkins Hill" sample)
Roundabout construction in front of Atkins Marketlead tested at 273 ppm (low)
UPDATED Friday the 13th: the hill is getting B-I-G-G-E-R
13 comments:
It all comes down to ethics - and it says a lot about the town officials who rubber stamp approve such proposals.
Ethically this should be landfilled somewhere in Amherst - not in someone else's backyard. But to do so near children and families is not ideal. That said, what sort of real estate developers would build and sell homes to families near a landfill in the first place? Who approved this development? Where does the buck stop?
Karma.
Priceless.
Clearly Amherst Woods residents were right to be concerned that the town would sell them out to save a few dollars on the disposal of this contaminated soil. One look at the kids playing on Tanglewood and Summerfield should tell you that this was a bad plan that endangered their health.
The town would not save money on disposing of the soil as it belongs to the contractor. The town would have made money from the contractor paying them to dump it (and saved money by using it as fill in the regrading of the cap).
The contaminated soil is a heck of a lot safer buried in a landfill under three feet of non-contaminated soil (as required by the DEP) than it is now sitting out exposed to the elements.
Exactly Larry. The only words people are reading are: arsenic, dangerous, contaminated, kids, etc... They are skipping over the facts that one has to actually come in physical contact with the soil, and that it would have been buried THREE FEET DEEP!!
Larry,
Thanks for doing this shoeleather reporting and getting the soil tested. If you hadn't done so, who would have? Good job.
- Ryan Morse
Thanks Ryan. As journalism goes I probably should have retaken samples and did the test again after the results came back positive just to be sure it was not a lab error (although they have been doing it at UMass forever); but it takes 2-3 weeks to get the results back, and I probably would not sleep well in the meantime.
Ditto Ryan's comment. Thank you Larry for researching this out. None of us would have been the wiser if you had not made the effort. Thank you!
Im really hoping that the pile of dirt that the kids play on while waiting for their ice cream isn't full of it...
No one is advocating leaving the pile to blow in the wind. It just should be buried far from a neighborhood full of kids. The fact that the town did not plan for this is embarrassing.
Who responsible for the dirt removal? Atkins, Town, or Contractors? I'm just curious, as already noted the longer it sits the more airborne toxins are blowing in the wind. I'm really surprised they haven't moved more quickly on this to either dispose or somehow cover it. I don't know much about this kind of stuff so maybe what is going airborne might a very minimal effect on anything. I know one thing for sure everytime I'm around Atkins now on a windy day I'll be wondering what the dusty air I'm breathing contains.
The dirt pile behind Atkins (the one that tested at 421 ppm lead) is a private project, so it's Atkins and their contractor's responsibility--but only after the construction project is complete.
And by the looks of things that could be well into the hot summer.
The dirt piles in front of Atkins are, the responsibility of the contractor who is doing work for the town and removing it is part of the $6 million contract.
Interesting the DEP had all sorts of conditions for using that soil in the old landfill: maintain fencing around it during grading, immediately cover with 6" clean soil, wet down all incoming loads to mitigate dust conditions on delivery, then cover with 3 more feet of clean soil.
None of that seems to be happening to it now as it sits in front of Atkins.
maybe people should contact the town manager about this in addition to writing here. it's our governement, right?
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