Please contact Rep. Bill Keating (https://keating.house.gov/contact), Sen. Elizabeth Warren (https://www.warren.senate.gov/contact), David.DeCoste@mahouse.gov and Sen. Ed Markey (https://www.markey.senate.gov/contact) to get federal funding because the pollution crosses through several towns (Forge Pond, Lilly Pond, Factory pond and waterways/streams/rivers that are connected.)
Every time I do an interview or publish an article I think to myself, well Nick this is it, but after yesterdays meeting I refuse to back down because it was absolute crap. Hanover's remediation plan is like putting a band-aid on a severed artery.
The town and the federal government had an obligation to clean that site up decades ago, and as a result, people are dying, or died. Without Superfund status, I have no doubt the clean-up will never be completed. We NEED federal funds! This is a appalling, and the town has been covering it up for decades.
All we heard about was mercury, what a joke, what about trichloroethylene, uranium 238, thorium 232, tofuene, chioroform, vinyl chloride, carbon tetrachloride, xylenes, freon, corrosives, and carbon tetrchloride to name a few, which was dumped at the site for 60+ years.
Just the past two weeks I have received several more messages of people suffering from brain tumors, one just today, disgusting. At this point, it is hard to keep up. I know I am well over forty people suffering from this horrid disease. Keep contacting your representatives, be relentless.
William Stella, is a resident of the town and an Environmental Scientist, below is our discussion on the town meeting.
William Stella
Your study is the most accurate analysis of cancer rates in the region than anything the DPH has produced. And she (DPH Lady) or someone should have acknowledged it.
Nick
Based on the plan last night do you think it will remediate the issue?
William Stella
My prediction is that they throw away all the money playing around with spent munitions and such on the upland portions of the site. Then they'll have to seek new money sources, and that will take years and legal fees, and by then most people will forget about the fact that the pond itself never got cleaned.
William Stella
We listened to their dog and pony show for two hours, and we didn't hear anything about cleaning up the pond. The DEP guy merely mentioned quickly, that tetra tech would later have to get permits to dredge the pond. The planning then permitting for that itself could take years. And the fact that they mentioned dredging shows their lack of seriousness on this issue. A close friend of mine does dredging for a living. It involves a huge excavator mounted to a barge. Then the operator blindly scoops buckets of soil from the bottom and dumps them on a separate boat or barge. 3 things don't work with this scenario; 1) all that crap won't fit on the pond. 2) the Mercury and lead-laden sediment will get stirred up and travel down in the North River watershed and will basically poison every living thing all the way down the river and out into the ocean. And 3) there are barrels containing trichloroethylene and other terrible things lying in the bottom of the pond. If an excavator punctures one or more, horrible things will happen again, to the wildlife all downstream. And finally, there's no way the North and South Rivers Watershed Assoc. , North River Commission, and all the conservation commissions of Marshfield, Scituate, etc will be okay with this. I don't even think DEP would be okay with that plan.
William Stella
Absolutely needs to back on the Superfund site list. This is exactly why there is such a fund. Because their cleanup costs are massive and only the federal government has the ability to find a cleanup from beginning to end. Sixty-eight million isn't going to scratch the surface.
William Stella
Trust me on this. They have NO PLANS to clean-up up the pond. I'm no epidemiologist, so I can't say what's likely contributing to cancer rates, but I know old bullets and spent mortar rounds is not.
The site is far bigger than what the Town is portraying. There are old wells and bunkers behind Forge Pond park, at Buckley associates, and Briarwood Dr. to name a few (I took pictures on my Past Blog) None of these sites have been tested for contaminates (I asked at the meeting).