Thursday, 4:30 PM
Hazardous waste found in Essex woods
By Kay Lazar and Scott Allen, Globe Staff
ESSEX -- Investigators have unearthed more than 100 drums of hazardous waste buried in a wooded area behind a former industrial plant here in what state officials say was probably an illegal dump from the mid-1980s or earlier.
A spokesman for the state Department of Environmental Protection said the damaged and broken drums apparently did not contaminate drinking water, but the solvents, resins and other chemicals inside may have leaked into Alewife Brook, just 15 feet away. As a precaution, DEP cleanup crews will test the brook's water and place air monitors around the site to make sure chemicals aren't escaping as they remove the drums.
"You don't really see these types of drum fields being discovered any more. We thought we had gotten most of them," said Ed Coletta, the DEP spokesman. "This one caught us by surprise."
Illicit waste dumps were once a common discovery as Massachusetts confronted the dangerous legacy of its industrial past, but property owners have cleaned up more than 22,000 waste sites in the last 15 years.
Neighbors of the site at 7 Essex Park Road said there had long been rumors of drums buried in the woods, but no one investigated until last summer when someone tipped off an environmental consultant working near the industrial plant. Finally, just after Christmas, work crews hired by the property owner, Perkins Realty Trust of Rochester, N.H., began excavating the barrels.
