The stories shared below are testimony in defense of environmental protection. Beware of political candidates who seek to slash the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and crucial legal protections such as the federal Clean Water Act. Warning: All 2016 Republican presidential candidates buck the EPA and environmental protection.
Cape Cod war wounds
Military ordnance discovered at Marconi Beach on Cape Cod is destroyed in a controlled explosion. /Cape Cod Times image
America's war legacy spread environmental damage to Cape Cod.
Artifacts of war litter the Cape and Islands: bombs dropped and lost in the sandy depths of time from long-forgotten training flights over the beaches, lead bullets and other military refuse penetrating deep in the soil at the former Massachusetts Military Reservation, tainting the groundwater and the Cape's only aquifer, and health complaints against a top-secret radar station.
Abandoned military ordnance discovered at a beach on Martha's Vineyard. /Image via therealcape.com
The U.S. Air Force PAVE PAWS station in Bourne, Mass., is capable of providing early warnings for ballistic missiles. /Cape Cod Times image
Saving Hodgson Brook
I helped save a brook that the Air Force nearly destroyed.
I first became aware of groundwater pollution at Pease Air Force Base while working as night editor at the Concord Monitor at the turn of the century.
The last time I was aware of groundwater contamination at Pease was in 2013, when I was the first to see the damage.
'A River Runs Dry'
Bearing witness is the highest calling for a journalist.
On a sunny July day in 1997, Middlesex News staff photographer Paul Kapteyn and I paddled a canoe down the upper Charles River, from a Millis boat launch area off Route 109 to the dam in South Natick. It was a perfect New England summer day. Pushed along on a historically low flow for The Charles, even for a summer month, the paddle-powered journey was punctuated superlatively with sweeping river-basin views, a colorful array of wildlife, and an environmental crisis unfolding slowly but surely all around us.
The suburban way of life in the MetroWest region of Greater Boston is environmentally damaging and draining the upper Charles River watershed.
Sprawling subdivisions arrayed with a variety of impervious surfaces -- from shingled roofs to asphalt driveways to storage sheds -- thwart the recharging of aquifers that thousands of suburban homes rely upon for drinking water wells. Fertilizers poured on suburban lawns wash nitrogen-rich storm runoff into The Charles, fueling growth of invasive plants such as purple loosestrife on the riverbanks (photo above) as well as weed and algae blooms in the river. After two decades of suburban-sprawl damage, the boat launch area where Paul and I slipped our 17-foot shiny silver aluminum canoe into a 40-foot-wide stretch of the The Charles headwaters is now choked with vegetation (photo below).
'A River Runs Dry' by Christopher Cheney
Middlesex News, Aug. 3, 1997
Development Threatens Rejuvenated Charles(Editor's note: This story online exclusively at bullworkofdemocracy.blogspot.com and sadly prophetic.)
The mills that made the upper Charles River an industrial dumping ground for 100 years are gone, but rapid development near its banks could suck it dry.
A month-long Middlesex News investigation found the river has recovered from its polluted past. A six-hour canoe trip from Millis down to the South Natick dam showed the river supports an abundance of wildlife, including great blue heron, muskrat and thousands of eastern painted turtles.
But more and more public wells, along with paving, construction and sewer projects could dry out the headwaters of The Charles in summer, according to Robert Zimmerman, executive director of the Charles River Watershed Association. Such projects are blocking water from getting to the network of aquifers that feed the river, he said.
"I can't imagine a more definitive scenario for a water crisis," he said.
Interviews with watershed association staff, state officials and people who live next to the river found that it faces a new, insidious environmental threat from growing towns like Bellingham, Franklin, Holliston, Medway, Millis and Norfolk.
The latest threat comes after years of struggling to clean up a waterway that was so polluted fabric dye left a telltale tint on those who dared to swim in it.
Today, round green duckweed petals, not much larger than the head of a pin, line the sides of the river like billions of alfalfa sprouts suspended from the water's surface.
A feast for waterfowl, the duckweed also camouflages eastern painted turtles poking thumb-sized snouts through the floating green blanket, when they're not sunning themselves on the muddy riverbanks.
Dozens of great blue herons, stork-like birds with wing spans around 6 feet, make the river their home. But a new environmental disaster is on the horizon.
State regulators and those who live on the river say they may soon be able to walk across a dry river bed in the summer if town planners and developers fail to acknowledge the limits of the river.
And it's not just a matter of duckweed, herons or turtles, which would be wiped out if the river ran dry.
Dozens of public wells that draw drinking water from the aquifers -- underground pools of water linked to the upper Charles and its tributaries -- are threatened. If the aquifers are in danger of running dry, the state may make them off limits to well use. Twenty-three such wells in Franklin, Medway, Millis and Norfolk could be shut down in summer months when there water is most needed.
Communities would be forced to compete with neighboring towns for a shrinking suppl of water, driving up the price of a shower, a shave, a drink, cooking, cleaning and flushing.
Antonio D'Alessandro has lived near the banks of The Charles in Medway for 45 years and said it has been receding for the past 15. "My kids used to use a rope swing and jump into the water," he said. "Now, you couldn't make a splash down there."
A 1996 state Department of Environmental Protection study says the aquifers that supply Franklin are stressed to the point where future resource planning is essential.
The DEP's Water Management Program has identified the town, one of the state's fastest growing communities, as an example of how uncontrolled growth threatens the upper Charles, which stretches from Echo Lake in Hopkinton to Boston Harbor.
A drought in the summer of 1995 dried up three Franklin tributaries of The Charles -- Mine Brook, Miscoe Brook and Dix Brook.
Despite the DEP study, despite the dry streams, despite the rope swing that now sits over hard ground instead of a swimming hole for children, a consultant who advises Franklin on water issues said the threat that development poses to the upper Charles is overstated.
"There was no observed long-term damage to wetlands during (the drought) period," said Ted Morine. "They all dried up totally and yet the wells sited in those valleys were able to pump during the three-month drought."
"They have the ability to withstand complete dry periods and come back unharmed," he said.
Town Administrator Wolfgang Bauer said Franklin's growth can be accommodated by water within the town's border's. "We've got plenty of water, it's just a matter of drilling the wells to tap into it," he said.
Lealdon Langley, manager of the DEP's water management program, said Franklin officials are over-simplifying the situation. He is taking a hard look at requests for new wells from Franklin, Holliston, Millis, Medway and Norfolk.
The Water Management Act requires us to balance environmental interests with the interests of economic development. I believe it's time for Franklin to live up to those obligations," he said.
"The state is not telling Franklin how to develop its community," Langley said. "What the state is saying is that under the law we will protect the quality of life."
The increasing number of public wells, combined with a building spree in boom towns along the river and expansion of a sewage treatment plant in Medway has cut the flow of water in the upper Charles to dangerous levels, according to the Charles River Watershed Association's Zimmerman.
Construction and paving block rainwater from trickling down into the aquifers.
A proposed expansion of the Charles River Pollution Control District plant in Medway, which would handle sewage from towns including Bellingham and Holliston, would also decrease the flow of water into the river, according to Zimmerman.
It is better to have water flow into the river from properly functioning septic systems in Bellingham and Holliston than have it redirected farther downstream to the plant in Medway, he said.
"I think we're already crossed the line and unless we go back and pay attention to groundwater recharge, we'll be in in a serious situation," Zimmerman said.
(Editor's note: The Charles River's perennially dry summer-season riverbed in Millis, shown in the recent Google Earth photo below, is an alarming new finding of this bullworkofdemocracy report. In the summer of 1997, this stretch of The Charles was open water and great for canoeing. The impact on wildlife over the past two decades is unimaginable, with countless thousands of animals likely lost in the mass habitat disruption.)
'The Lagoon'
Sediment has filled half of "The Lagoon" in Marlborough, Mass. For decades, oil-tainted water has flowed from the man-made pond's dam and spillway (lower right) into the Sudbury Reservoir. /Google Earth image
"We call that 'The Lagoon,'" the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority hydrologist told me.
She was the first state official I interviewed about Maple Street, and she had studied water quality in the nearby Sudbury Reservoir, The man-made lake is dammed at its southern shores in Framingham and stretches north into Marlborough, where several small streams help fill the reservoir. One of the tributaries, which meanders south along Maple and River streets then feeds The Lagoon, has a lengthy history of environmental damage.
MWRA researchers had known about The Lagoon for years, the state scientist told me. A week later, the senior water authority official in charge of monitoring the Sudbury Reservoir told me the water was not potable. He said the Sudbury Reservoir would require environmental remediation efforts and new treatment facilities to be of much use in an emergency such as loss of access to the far larger and far cleaner Quabbin Reservoir.
The Sudbury Reservoir is one of the largest emergency reserve sources of water for the Greater Boston area. For several decades, a small stream that meanders along a mile-long portion of Maple Street in Marlborough has been washing oil-tainted water into The Lagoon, a football-field-sized pond located at the corner of Maple and Walker streets. The Lagoon, which is unlined, is equipped with a concrete dam and spillway.
Beginning in the early 20th century, oil spills had plagued the densely developed drag of commercial properties along Maple Street, one of the main southern entryways into Marlborough, including a lengthy history of rail access. Two of the small business owners in the Maple Street contamination hot-zone told me there had been several railway oil spills very close (or on) their properties over the years. They were both resigned, but angry, about the oil spill damage to their land and property values.
In late spring 1996, I joined the reporting staff of the Framingham-based Middlesex News and spent the first couple weeks in the newspaper's Marlborough bureau. I was more-or-less on my own to find stories. In my first week on the Marlborough beat, I drove to the Worcester office of the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection to conduct a records check on contamination sites in Marlborough.
The list of DEP-monitored sites in Marlborough included about 10 properties along Maple Street, which caught my eye and prompted an afternoon walk up and down the road as soon as I drove back into town.
Along a quarter-mile stretch of Maple Street, every other small business property had either sustained petroleum-based contamination, including multiple oil and gasoline spills. One DEP-monitored site at the northern tip of the environmental-damage hot zone had been used a century ago to convert coal to a thick, molasses-like form of fuel oil. Records indicated early cleanup efforts removed a vein of dark black waste product from the coal conversion site. The vein of hard tar was found about eight feet below the ground's surface very close to the gully cut by the stream that feeds The Lagoon.
At an old gasoline station next to the coal conversion site, about a ton of contaminated soil had been stored in a pile near the edge of the stream gully. At least half of the tainted soil had mysteriously disappeared, according to DEP records, The guy in the station definitely did not want to talk about it. My best guess as I walked away from the station was the soil pile had either eroded into the stream or been raided for "midnight dumping" disposal at another location.
Above, trees and light brush bound The Lagoon in Marlborough. The parking lot to the west of The Lagoon is behind a Maple Street business. Homes line the streets to the north and east of The Lagoon. Below, The Lagoon (upper left) drains into the Sudbury Reservoir. /Google Earth images
Nasty Norwalk water
The second venue for my environmental-damage education was on the Connecticut Gold Coast in filthy rich Fairfield County.
In the summer of 1986, I served as CCAG's fundraising canvas director in Norwalk, which is located in the heart of The Constitution State's most affluent region near New York City. Soon after converting half of the basement in South Norwalk's Methodist Church into CCAG canvas office space, I visited the Kellogg-Deering Well Field Superfund site, which is in one of Norwalk's mostly tony northern neighborhoods.
I parked my car on Slocum Street and could see the flag-pole-high aerator on the other side of the railroad tracks, about a football field's length away.from where I was peering across the empty crew cabin of my crappy-cream-colored Pontiac Sunbird through the passenger window. Unlike the aerator that SRS workers used to evaporate highly contaminated water in Southington, Conn., the Superfund site aerators in Norwark were inside silos. Rather than using an aerator to release deadly toxins into the air, as was the case at SRS in Southington, the aerators in Norwalk helped extract tainted ground water from the poisoned aquifer below for treatment. In a five-year review report filed with the EPA in September 2012, officials at Superfund-site contractor Tetra Tech Nus in Pasadena, Calif., say the aeration effort is falling short of drawing enough groundwater to make significant progress in restoring the aquifer to drinking-water level.
Containing the aeration of the Kellogg-Deering Well Field's contaminated groundwater inside silos limits release of toxins into the air, and the review report found the Slocum Street Aerator safe for human health. But as I gazed the shiny structure a strong place-kick away from my car, I knew the baker's dozen homes on Slocum Street were less than a quarter of the houses packed into tenth-acre plots in the tightly packed subdivision off Main Avenue. I knew that Main Ave, obscured behind the line of maple trees that provided the Slocum Street Aerator with a pastoral backdrop, was lined with houses.
/EPA image
Southington deathly sorrow
More than 30 years have passed, but memories of the first time I knocked on doors along Lazy Lane will always be as fresh as they are frightening.
Southington's environmental disaster, which I witnessed festering as a young and inexperienced man in the early 1980s soon after two locations in the Connecticut town were declared Environmental Protection Agency Superfund sites, began before I was born. The Herculean EPA-led cleanup remains a work in progress after the passing of more than three decades and the first generations of environmental casualties.
Southington is ground zero for two of my life's most twisted ironies. The birthplace of my awakening to the deadly consequences of environmental damage has a tiny sliver of my family's fingerprints on the killing machines. And 10 years after a cynical newspaper reporter unfairly cast CCAG's educationally oriented community organizing as monetarily motivated, I started a now two-decade-long journalism career.
A top source of toxic waste contamination in the town, which is home to more than 43,000 residents, is the EPA-erased Solvent Recovery Service of New England (SRS) facility at the foot of a hill below dozens of homes on gently twisting Lazy Lane. From 1957 to 1967, one of the prime sources of the toxic waste dumped in two unlined, Olympic-swimming-pool-sized lagoons at SRS was East Hartford-based Pratt & Whitney Aircraft, the company where my father worked for three decades and provided a living for his family.
The Quinnipiac River runs through the center of Southington. In the northern neighborhoods, the river flows south near SRS, then downstream to the center of the town, not far from the Old Southingon Landfill Superfund Site. Both sites are in the river's watershed, according to a December 2012 U.S. Fish and Wildlife Department report.
In the summers of 1984 and 1985, when I stood on the front doorsteps of the modest middle-class houses on Lazy Lane as a fundraiser and community organizer for the Hartford-based Connecticut Citizen Action Group (CCAG), the pain and sorrow of untimely death could be seen on every face that peered back at me through the screen-door windows and across the dark New England-red backyard picnic tables.
I will never forget the thin, outstretched arm of one longtime Lazy Lane homeowner as she pointed to each of the neighboring properties on either side of her lawn and across the street. "They have all lost someone to cancer," she told me of leukemia cases and other environmentally related maladies that had claimed many lives before her eyes.
Several Lazy Lane residents shared their memories of large dump trucks climbing up the hill and passing by their houses. Sheets of flapping canvas covered the deadly cargo of toxic-waste-tainted soil that had been scooped up at SRS as the lumbering vehicles rolled toward Southington's other Superfund site, an 11-acre municipal landfill in the center of town surrounded by residential neighborhoods and small businesses.
I will never forget the weathered face of the 40-something owner of an automotive shop on the edge of the Old Southington Landfill. His anger was visible and audible as he explained that the air in every space inside his one-story structure was contaminated with a collection of carcinogenic chemicals that included alarming levels of methane and benzene. He told me about the EPA investigators who had been walking through the neighborhood in their baggy hazmat suits. The government scientists wanted him to abandon his property. He was grimly determined to never leave his nightmarish investment in The American Dream.
The Quinnipiac River watershed includes a small pond a short distance south from the former town dump, where I canvassed another neighborhood for CCAG.
I will never forget the shock that gripped the face of the well-groomed 40-something doctor as he peered at the topographical map clasped my clipboard, the scene illuminated by the wrought iron-style lamp that lit his field-stone and concrete doorsteps. "That little pond is where I have been taking my little girls to go swimming," he told me.
Solvent Recovery Service cleanup stats
SRS Superfund site: By the numbers
- Address: 10 Lazy Lane, Southington, Conn.
- Proposed as Superfund site in December 1982. Listed as Superfund site in September 1983.
- "Cooking" and treating 56,670 cubic yards of toxic-waste tainted soil completed in February 2015. Lagoon area cooked: 1.7 acres
- From 1995 to 2013, a groundwater collection system at the Superfund site removed 16,000 pounds of hazardous materials
- May 2014 report: In Situ Thermal Remediation: Remedial Action Work Plan and Project Operations Plan, Gardner, Massachusetts-based TerraTherm, EPA and state regulated cleanup contractor
- Southington population growth, 2000 to 2010: 8.4 percent
Southington, Connecticut /Image via Google
Environmental protection is essential
Environmental damage destroys life.
When I was a boy, every street and roadside in America was lined with garbage. The wild turkey, Revolutionary-era icon Ben Franklin's candidate for national bird, was nearly extinct in my home state and across the rest of New England.
Now, it is rare to see motorists toss bags of fast-food waste out their windows, and I see flocks of wild turkeys along the roadsides and highways of New Hampshire on nearly a daily basis.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the nation's top nature watchdog that was created nearly a half century ago with the support of a Republican president, and key safeguard laws such as the Clean Water Act are largely responsible for turning the tide in an epic American struggle that continues to this day.
The environmental-damage memoir that I will be writing and sharing in stages over the final handful of days leading to the 2016 N.H. Presidential Primary is inspired by the Republican candidates' misguided and self-serving attacks on essential protections that stand between The People and poisons.
Among the top contenders heading into Tuesday's first-in-the-nation primary, John Kasich is the closest candidate the Republican Party has to an environmentalist. The Ohio governor acknowledges the moral obligation to preserve the environment for future generations and accepts the existence of global warming. But he opposes the Obama administration's plan to cut U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, which would include limiting Ohio's noxious coal-fired electricity generation.
Even with the EPA, Clean Water Act and other environmental protections, atrocities against nature remain a daily occurrence in America.
From the lead-tainted water disaster in poverty stricken Flint, Mich., to the historic natural gas leak in the affluent Porter Ranch neighborhood of Los Angeles, no American is safe from the unfettered devils of environmental damage.
I have seen the damage done.
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