Project faces toxic questions
Officials want site redeveloped; group fears spread of contamination
METHUEN -- An ambitious campaign for renewal along the Spicket River in downtown Methuen has turned one aging industrial building into an apartment house and another site into a riverside park. Millions of dollars in state money have been spent to rebuild a bridge across the river and erect a new clock tower.
But a determined group of local residents has raised questions about the latest redevelopment plan, an effort to clean up adjacent properties at 4 Gleason St. and 254 Broadway and to build senior citizen housing, retail space, and medical offices on the combined parcels.
Led by residents Linda Gerard and Lisa McCrillis, the Methuen Environment Coalition, which has at least 10 members in the neighborhood, has argued that contamination left from years of industrial and other uses on the properties has led to disease in the neighborhood. The group wants the site cleaned up and left undeveloped.
It is an effort that has frustrated local officials, who support the project and see the arguments of the neighborhood group as unsubstantiated. They point out that David Spada, the owner of the two properties, wants to clean them up before building on them.
''We've got a group of people who would rather have [that land] sit there as a contaminated site," said state Representative Arthur Broadhurst, a supporter of the development proposal.
Soil tests on the 4 Gleason St. property, conducted by an engineer hired by Spada, show it is contaminated with the suspected carcinogens trichloroethylene and perchloroethylene, as well as mercury and chromium. The property had been the site of a number of manufacturers over the years, including a metal cabinet factory that closed in 1999 and businesses that made semiconductors, shoes, and hats.
Tests by the same engineer on the soil at 254 Broadway property, the former location of a gas station, indicate that the property is contaminated with petroleum products in an area where an underground gas tank leaked.
The women are not contending that development will bring new contamination, but they fear that any disruption of the site beyond a cleanup will spread existing contamination.
They also question the wisdom of building housing units for the elderly on the site, even if it is cleaned up. The project calls for 91 assisted-living apartments for the elderly, with about 50 percent being rented at below-market rates.
One reason for their concern is the discovery of a grouping of illnesses in a neighborhood by the river. Since 1997, two 8-year-old boys, including McCrillis's son Duncan, have died of brain cancer; three adults have been stricken with multiple sclerosis and one with myasthenia gravis, all diseases that can be caused by environmental factors. And the postman who delivered mail to the neighborhood for seven years says he can no longer work due to polymyositis, a muscle disease, and scleroderma, a hardening of the skin.
Though no evidence exists linking the contamination to the illnesses, the women and their group have been successful in getting their concerns heard by people outside Methuen.
The group has persuaded a state environmental group to support their cause and has acquired the pro bono services of a prominent Boston law firm that has forced the developer to make the development process as transparent as possible.
After more than two years of complaints from Spicket River neighbors, the state Department of Public Health started an investigation six months ago into cancer rates in Methuen that will attempt to determine whether industrial pollution in the city has any connection to cancer cases. Suzanne Condon, the department's assistant commissioner, said the investigation, which may also look into the incidence of other diseases, should be completed this summer. It took two years to act on the request, she said, because of a backlog of such requests at the department.
The debate over pollution, disease, and development along the Spicket River has been a sore point for city officials, who see the project as an important piece of the development puzzle along the river. The combined properties reach back to the river's edge. If the housing units, retail stores, and office space are built, the project will bring more people downtown. A walkway along the river may follow and then another bridge, weaving together elements of renewal in the area.
Mayor Sharon M. Pollard said that Spada has assured her that the cleanup will begin soon. Spada did not return numerous calls requesting comment. His engineer, Allen Walker, predicts that the effort will start in the next few weeks.
''If there is contamination there, the city will make sure that whoever owns the property cleans it up," Pollard said. ''If the appropriate environmental and conservation measures can be met, providing affordable assisted living for poor senior citizens is a project I do support."
It has been two years since Spada obtained all the needed local approvals for the project. With help from state and local officials, he has also been awarded $350,000 from the state to clean up the site and a promise of a $10.1 million bond for construction.
Some local officials assign at least part of the blame for the delay to the group of neighborhood residents that has battled the project.
''When these people were raising a ruckus, they brought in a very tough environmental lawyer," said Toody Healy, Pollard's chief of staff. ''Spada has gone above and beyond their requests. He has exceeded what he has had to do. The public process has drawn this thing out."
Broadhurst and Councilor William Manzi III each own property in the Spicket River area that could increase in value if Spada cleans up and develops his site. Both officials say that personal gain has nothing to do with their support of Spada's proposal.
Broadhurst argues that Spada has the desire and the money to clean up the site while those who oppose the development offer no alternatives to the status quo.
Manzi said that ''it would be good for the city to have this currently blighted property converted to a productive use and to get a private developer to clean it up." As for the neighbors' arguments, Manzi said, ''I'm not a scientist, and the city doesn't set environmental policy."
For the women and their allies, however, the campaign against the proposed development is a life-or-death matter. They will not be dissuaded.
''I don't want someone sitting here, 10 years from now, with more kids dead," said Gerard, sitting at the dining room table in the house on Broadway where she now lives, surrounded by yellowing files and reams of water-quality reports and pamphlets on carcinogens. ''No one should have to go through this, no one," she said.
Gerard, a dishwasher with an eighth-grade education, moved to a house on Gleason Street near the metal cabinet factory in May 1995. It was the same year that the city's renewal effort along the banks of the Spicket River officially began, as local officials used about $900,000 in state and federal funds to convert the site of a burned-out mill into Riverwalk Park.
After moving near the industrial site, Gerard said she noticed a sweet smell that made her eyes and nose burn. As time went on, she suffered from rashes; her dog got sick and died; and her grandson developed a tumor on his leg. Gerard said she notified the local Health Department and was told that contamination at the plant site was not causing her problems.
The mayor said last week that all of Gerard's claims and those of anyone else in the neighborhood have been looked into. ''There's no evidence that the site is making people sick," Pollard said.
While Gerard dealt with her health issues, the development plans moved forward. In 1997, a clock tower was erected on Hampshire Street's Gault Square. In 2001, a red-brick mill on Osgood Street, across the street from Riverwalk Park, was converted into Mills Falls apartments, 97 housing units with at least 20 percent rented at below-market rates. Two years later, Patriots Bridge, a $2.3 million span across the Spicket River on Lowell Street, was completed.
The metal cabinet factory closed in 1999, and in 2000 Spada bought its 4 Gleason St. site for $615,000. That August, he purchased the former gas station site at 254 Broadway.
A 41-year-old lawyer who grew up in Methuen and now lives in Brookline, Spada is no stranger to development in Methuen. In the 1990s he built Ranger Plaza on Pelham Road, just off Interstate 93. The parcel now houses an
Spada, who demolished the metal cabinet factory in February 2002, has proposed cleaning up the adjacent properties and building the assisted-living apartments for the elderly under the state's Chapter 40B affordable-housing law. He would also build about 20,000 square feet of retail and medical office space.
As Spada was putting together his plans, Gerard and McCrillis were confronting illness in their neighborhood.
In August 2001, Duncan McCrillis, who lived on Union Street across the river from the proposed development, was diagnosed with brain cancer. While at Children's Hospital, where Duncan was treated, his parents met the parents of Randy Marrero, who lived on Railroad Street less than a half mile from the McCrillis home. Marrero also had brain cancer. The boys died on July 15, 2002.
''They died within hours of each other," Lisa McCrillis said. ''It was like Duncan went to go get him."
Gerard read a newspaper story about the two boys and went over to the McCrillis house, where she met Lisa. Together the women learned of other people suffering from diseases that could be related to environmental factors. On Union Street, two residents and one former resident have suffered from multiple sclerosis. A fourth has myasthenia gravis.
The two women started working to get out information on what they saw as the desperate news in their Spicket River neighborhood. They contacted the Toxics Action Center, a Boston-based group that in December 2002 labeled 4 Gleason St. one of the state's 12 most-polluted sites.
Gerard has also worked with Robert Fitzpatrick, a lawyer with the Boston law firm Wilmer, Cutler, Pickering, Hale, and Dorr who filed with the state Department of Environmental Protection to get the project into a public involvement plan, requiring Spada to file all documents in the case in the city library for public view.
''Linda Gerard had concerns about the cleanup," Fitzpatrick said. ''She wanted to make sure the site was cleaned up in accordance with state law."
As she pushed her campaign along, Gerard said, she came home one afternoon in April 2002 to find a dummy dressed in a work uniform like her own, propped up on a hospital bed at the 4 Gleason St. site. She called the police, and the dummy and the bed disappeared. A few hours later, she said, she took a photograph of the dummy hanging in effigy from a tower on the plant property.
Spada's project was approved by the Methuen Zoning Board of Appeals in March 2003, with the understanding that the site will be cleaned up. The state Department of Environmental Protection has also required Spada to clean up the property before it can be used for residential development.
David Bancroft -- senior vice president at MassDevelopment, the state's economic development entity -- said the agency has granted Spada $350,000 to clean up the site and guaranteed him a $10.1 million interest-free bond. The guarantees were made after Pollard and Manzi wrote letters on official stationery to the developer endorsing the project and encouraging state agencies to finance the project.
Walker said the cleanup would require removing 650 to 1,000 cubic yards of contaminated soil from 4 Gleason St. The crews will also remove the foundation of the former plant and excavate old sewer-line connections. Contaminated soil will be removed from the 254 Broadway site. The work will take about a week.
Gerard said she plans to keep a close eye on any cleanup. ''I've had to read reams and reams of paperwork," she said. ''They've played me for a dummy, and they've underestimated me. When they used big words, I got out the dictionary. I'm not going away."
