Could polluted National Fireworks site in Hanover become a Superfund site?

HANOVER − The money used to help dispose of contaminated soil and remove explosives from the polluted National Fireworks site, drawn from the country's largest environmental contamination cleanup settlement, is running out. The price tag to complete the job is nearly triple what has already been spent. And because of this, work on the polluted site in Hanover is set to stop later this year until more money is earmarked.

Will the town pursue federal help and shed its past fear of being labeled a Superfund site in order to close this decades-long chapter?

The future of the 280-acre property in Forge Industrial Park will be discussed at two community meetings hosted by the federal Environmental Protection Agency and the state Department of Environmental Protection to update residents about where the cleanup stands, as well as what potential the site has for joining the EPA’s National Priorities List within a program more commonly known as “Superfund.”

The first meeting will be held at the Hanover High School auditorium at 287 Cedar St. on Thursday at 7 p.m. The second is scheduled for 7 p.m. Jan. 18 at the Hanson Middle School auditorium at 111 Liberty St.

From 1907 to 1970, the property was used for manufacturing and testing munitions and fireworks for the federal government as well as a dumping ground for hazardous waste. The town bought 130 acres for conservation in the 1970s.

Fish, groundwater contained pollutants

The EPA evaluated the site in the 1980s, and in the 1990s anglers were warned against consuming fish from Factory Pond due to the discovery of high levels of mercury. Officials also found mercury, lead and organic solvents in the sediment, soil and groundwater, as well as propellants and explosives.

The EPA said that assessment and cleanup work by the “potentially responsible parties” began in 1997.

To avoid the stain of having a Superfund site, town leaders pushed the state to not seek priority listing with the EPA and instead negotiate a settlement with the former owners of the property, including the Department of Defense, the National Coating Corp. and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which had used the site to dispose of toxic waste, according to Patriot Ledger archives.

One of the potentially responsible parties, Tronox, filed for bankruptcy in 2009. But it was discovered through legal action that Kerr-McGee, a company of which Tronox was an offshoot, had used Tronox to leave behind and avoid environmental liabilities of its pollution activities across the country in order to pursue lucrative oil and gas opportunities.

Kerr-McGee had mined uranium in the Navajo Nation; manufactured rocket fuel in Nevada; treated wood with creosote in the Northeast, Midwest and South; and processed radioactive thorium in Chicago. The legal action with Kerr-McGee and parent company Anadarko Petroleum Corp. resulted in $4.4 billion to be set aside for the cleanup of environmental contamination, the largest payment of its kind ever.

Just over $73 million was set aside from the settlement to clean up the National Fireworks site in 2014. At the time, the estimated cost of a comprehensive cleanup was as high as $158 million.

Now it could cost about $200 million to completely clean the site, according to state and federal officials who met with Hanover officials in September.

Roughly $10 million from the settlement remains for a “safe shutdown” of the site in October until more money is available for the remaining cleanup.

17 tons of munitions removed from Hanover site

During the cleanup efforts, officials have removed 190,000 munition items, or 17 tons' worth, as of August. About 11% of those items were explosives and destroyed on-site by State Police.

Crews have held controlled detonations at the site since 2017. Initially, detonations were supposed to last a month, according to Patriot Ledger archives, but they continued for years. According to a schedule posted on Hanover’s website, detonations since 2019 have occurred as infrequently as every other month to as frequently as six times in one month, as happened in January and March 2020.

Crews have also investigated and cleaned up 14 of the 21 areas of varying size on the southern portion of the site, where there were munitions and soil contamination. But state officials couldn’t definitely say what percentage of the entire cleanup project had been completed.

No public or private water wells were affected by the contaminants, state and federal officials say. But there is risk from munitions on the site, direct contact with the soil and sediment and consumption of fish at Factory Pond by people and wildlife.

More: Hanover closes off pond as detonations continue

MassDEP first sought the EPA's help in November 2022 to explore being added to the National Priorities List after negotiations with the remaining partially responsible parties that had taken place “for a number of years” stalled, said Cathy Kiley, an environmental analyst with MassDEP. The parties “didn’t accept that the site contamination downgradient the Factory Pond was from fireworks. That was one of the main issues,” she said.

“I think everybody had the expectation that an agreement was going to be reached, such that there would not be this type of a shutdown. When that was made clear that that wasn’t the case, that’s when we started making some decisions and reaching out to EPA,” Kiley said.

Disagreement about cost also held up negotiations.

“This is the only path forward that’s been put forth by our legal counsel at this time,” Kiley said.

It was not immediately clear how much the three potentially responsible polluters have paid toward the project.

It was clear, though, that completing the project would take a lot more money and several more years.

Superfund listing would take years

The Superfund program is more formally known as the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act, established in 1980 to create a tax on chemical and petroleum industries to help clean up polluted sites, as well as establish an authority that would require responsible parties to pay for such cleanups.

Bob Cianciarulo, a remediation and restoration branch chief for the EPA, said if the agency took over, it would in a sense have to go backward before moving forward. The agency would have to inspect the property with its own standards and score the site based on threats to human and environmental health, which alone may take a year. A letter of support from Gov. Maura Healey would be required before the site is proposed to be added to the list.

“We’re not going to just pick up the shovels from the state,” Cianciarulo said.

Cianciarulo noted that the $200 million estimate to clean up the National Fireworks site was “large, if that ends up being the cost, but nowhere near among the largest.”

The most recent site added to the Superfund list was the Lower Neponset River in Milton and Boston in 2022. There are 41 sites across Massachusetts, 123 sites in New England and 1,336 across the country.

Hannah Morse covers growth and development for The Patriot Ledger. Contact her at hmorse@patriotledger.com.

This article originally appeared on The Patriot Ledger: MassDEP explores Superfund listing for polluted Hanover property