NASHUA – U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
representatives discussed the ongoing efforts to remediate the Mohawk Tannery
site during a special Tuesday Board of Aldermen meeting.
Featuring potentially radioactive barium, as well as
carcinogenic dioxin and arsenic, the property along the Nashua River is an EPA
Superfund site.
“The plan as it is conceived right now is to basically
contain all that waste that is already in there by building a containment
structure, or wall around it,” EPA Remedial Project Manager Gerardo
Millan-Ramos told board members on Tuesday.
“The general idea or approach here is to basically
consolidate all this waste in this area by building that secant wall first up
to the soil level and then on top of it a containment wall that would hold the
initial waste and then have it capped with an impermeable cap,” Millan-Ramos
added.
New Hampshire and Rhode Island Superfund Section Chief
Melissa Taylor said as a “back of the envelope estimate” to dispose of the
Fimbel Door Landfill waste off site at a disposal facility would be about $6.5
million. However, some money could be saved, dropping that price tag down to
around $4.5 million if no retaining wall is built.
“The proposal, as the neighbors understand it, has not been
to clean up the lagoons – it has been to add more to them and then cap it,”
Alderman Tom Lopez, Ward 4, said. “There’s a separate chamber that they are
describing behind the two lagoons, but they also have a plan to pile stuff
higher on the secant wall, if I understand correctly.”
Gerardo then softly replied by saying, “correct.”
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