Cleanups vying for attention
For those who care about Lake Cochituate, there have been two competing sources of worry recently: the cleanup at the Natick Army Labs Superfund site on the lake shore and a proposal to use herbicides to kill weeds proliferating in the water.
Marco Kaltofen, cochairman of Natick's Restoration Advisory Board, a committee overseeing the cleanup of the Superfund site, said it's important for the town to keep a close eye on both issues and not let one eclipse the other.
''Our public officials need to do more," he said.
The challenges involved in doing that will be highlighted tonight when the Army holds a meeting at 6 at the Morse Institute Library to update the public on its progress in the cleanup, while the Conservation Commission meets at 7 at town hall with state officials proposing to use herbicides in the lake.
The effort to clean up contamination by a variety of chemicals is going well at the Superfund site, an Army official said.
''We're focused on getting things cleaned up and understanding the sites completely," said Army environmental scientist Jim Connolly. He said residents who attend tonight's meeting will receive an update on the five-year effort to clean ground water of volatile organic compounds.
In 1989, a site on the 78-acre lakeshore Army campus was found to be polluted with chemicals that had likely been used for developing and testing military equipment and supplies, such as improved protective clothing and long-lasting packaged food.
Studies determined that pollution had seeped into the ground water -- the underground water that feeds town drinking water wells -- and had also made its way into the lake.
In 2001, the Army assisted Natick with $3 million in funding for a treatment plant that could filter pollution from well water drawn from the ground near the facility.
The Army also set up a separate monitoring and cleaning system at the facility in which ground water is pumped to the surface so that contaminants can evaporate.
The Army and members of the Restoration Advisory Board, which was set up by the Environmental Protection Agency, have identified more than a dozen contaminated sites at the facility, including an area of lake sediment polluted by potentially carcinogenic polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs. No cleanup plans have been drawn up yet for the pollution in the lake.
At the meeting, Connolly and John McHugh, the Army official in charge of the Superfund site, will unveil a pilot project of ''in situ" treatment, a new process that would pump a chemical into the groundwater to clean it rather than requiring that water be pumped out of the ground.
Kaltofen said it's important for Natick officials to keep a close eye on the project, even as the herbicide debate has intensified. He said key decisions have to be made soon about cleaning up the sediment, which has been poisoning fish and making bass and eel from the lake dangerous to eat.
''It's getting down to crunch time, when decisions are being made. And once the decisions are made, it's hard to move the Army," he said.
He added that it had been difficult to get town officials interested in the cleanup, and they had dragged their feet on things as simple as posting his board's meetings on the town website.
Kaltofen said that issues of weed control in the lake and the Superfund cleanup are related. He said some weed control methods could hamper the cleanup of the PCB contamination.
Bob Bois, Natick's environmental officer and conservation agent, said town officials' focus on the cleanup hasn't wavered.
''The town is still plugged into the process," Bois said, adding that he has frequent discussions and correspondence with all the parties concerned. He said many town officials are concerned about both issues, as residents frequently inquire about the lake.
In 2003, the state asked to use herbicides to control Eurasian milfoil, an aquatic weed that some say is choking the lake.
Some residents appealed the Natick Conservation Commission's approval of the herbicide use, stalling chemical treatment of the weeds for several years. This month the state unveiled an expanded proposal to use herbicides, reigniting the controversial issue. The conservation board is holding hearings on the plan.
State officials and some residents say the herbicides are perfectly safe.
The 614-acre lake is bordered by Natick, Framingham, and Wayland.
Alison O'Leary Murray may be reached at amurray@globe.com. 
