The Bennington Select Board voted on Monday to support the identification of a site, known locally as the Jard property, as a Superfund site which would allow the federal Environmental Protection Agency to remove any contamination in the area.
The property, which is contaminated with polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, could be placed on the EPA's national priority list if the federal government accepts a request by Gov. Peter Shumlin. The vote taken on Monday was to ask Shumlin to make that request based on the town's support.
The Jard factory manufactured capacitors for 20 years starting in 1969 before declaring bankruptcy in 1989.
Trish Coppolino, an environmental analyst with the Vermont Department of Environmental Conservation, told the Select Board that the EPA's emergency response department had worked on the site twice in the last 21 years. In 1992, almost 200 tons of PCB-contaminated soils were removed and in 2007, the factory building was razed and almost 3,700 tons of soil and contaminated soils were removed.
But even after the site was capped in 2007, the Vermont DEC has monitored the site and found the plume of contaminated groundwater was affecting the duck pond on Park Street and some residential wells.
“We also determined that groundwater along Park Street is very shallow and it's discharging during high flood events and spring snow melt into the homes of the residents along Park Street and leaving behind PCB-impacted soil. … To give you an idea, basically at this site from six feet down to 32 feet in specific areas of the site is still heavily contaminated with PCB which continues to migrate at the site and off-site,” she said.
Coppolino said no one is drinking the groundwater from the area anymore and actions have been taken, like filling the basements of some of the homes on Park Street so no contaminated soil can get inside, but the officials at the DEC would like to site cleaned so no further problems will crop up.
“We're here because the Vermont DEC does not have the financial resources to clean up the Jard site and we are supporting listing this site to (the national priority list) so it can get cleaned up,” Coppolino said.
Meghan Cassidy, whose title with the EPA in New England is chief Superfund technical and enforcement support, said that while the EPA had a department that had done some emergency remediation at the site in the past, that department could not take on a more comprehensive project to remove all the contamination.
“No one has ever really tried to remediate the site and that, I think, is the process that the state is asking us to initiate at this point,” she said.
Because the Jard company has declared bankruptcy, the clean-up would likely be financed by the EPA with a state share of 10 percent but Cassidy said she expected little or no cost to the town. The project must be recommended by the governor because of the requirement for state financial participation.
Although Cassidy cautioned the Select Board that the process would move slowly, she said it was important to get the Jard site on the Superfund list so the EPA could begin its process.
“Getting to the point where we are actually implementing and building (a solution) will be many, many years from now but until we get on the list, we can't even get in the queue (of pending projects,)” she said.
