Ridding a tiny river of big stench

Jim Jadul has promised that he will not retire until he can safely swim the waters of the Island End River, now saturated with coal-tar byproducts.

Jadul, general manager of the Admiral's Hill Marina in Chelsea, believes he will be able to retire next year.

The Island End, a 29-acre tidal river that flows between Chelsea and Everett and into the Mystic River, is undergoing the beginning of a projected eight-month, $40 million cleanup that will include the dredging of 72,000 cubic yards of contaminated sediment.

At low tide, the exposed mud emits a foul odor that wafts through parts of Everett and the Admiral's Hill area of Chelsea. The river was identified as a source of nuisance smells in an odor survey conducted last year by a consultant hired by Chelsea.

Cleanup work began March 13 -- the same day the Army Corps of Engineers approved the plan and 17 years after the three corporations that inherited the problem signed a pollution-prevention consent order with the state.

''We are absolutely, totally thrilled," Jadul said. ''I've been here for 11 years and I've been dealing with it for 11 years. I had high hopes that this day would come."

Ron D. Morgese, District 8 city councilor in Chelsea, called the cleanup ''a great thing."

''They're going to correct the sins of the past down there, and it's going to open up a whole new world out there in the Island End River," Morgese said. ''There's a planned condominium development in the Admiral's Hill area. That'll be a more attractive proposition." The cleanup will reduce odors, Morgese said, and ''it may allow wildlife to resustain its inhabitancy there, and make it more accessible to the public."

Although some cleanup work was performed on the river in the early 1990s, it wasn't until 1998 that the state Department of Environmental Protection asked the corporations responsible for the area to come up with a permanent solution, said Tim Cosgrave, project manager at Harvard Project Services, the company hired to oversee the process.

While obtaining permits from local, state, and federal agencies was a slow process for his Harvard-based company, Cosgrave said, the cleanup could be relatively speedy, ridding the river of coal-tar byproducts by Thanksgiving.

KeySpan Corp., Honeywell International, and Beazer East Inc., the corporations designated by the state as responsible for the river's cleanup, have agreed to each pay one-third of the $40 million cost. They inherited responsibility from corporate ancestors: companies that eventually became part of KeySpan owned land on the Everett side of the river, and the land was rented to companies that later became part of Honeywell and Beazer East. The companies processed coal tar in a facility there from 1900 to 1960, when it was shut down, Cosgrave said.

Cleanup crews are building a sea wall a short distance into the river, about 1,000 feet along the shoreline. The sea wall, which is situated in the area of highest contamination, is designed to trap much of the polluted sediment. The sediment will then be mixed with cement to stabilize it, turning it into a gelatin-like material and eventually solidifying it, he said.

The work is expected to be completed in July. Crews will then use an excavator to dredge an estimated 72,000 cubic yards of polluted sediment beyond the new sea wall, deposit it between the existing shoreline and the sea wall, and then treat it in the same way. Once that process is complete, Cosgrave said, crews will cap the solidified sediment, making it look like a concrete wharf.

Discussing the remedy's design, Cosgrave said, ''What we've done is move the working waterfront from where it is a little bit into the river. We believe we've engineered an appropriate structure to contain the sediment."

He added that air samples will be taken in certain areas during the dredging process. DEP officials, Cosgrave said, will require the companies to perform ongoing monitoring and maintenance of the structure after it's completed.

At Admiral's Hill Marina, which has 136 boat slips, Jadul said the short-term inconvenience can be tolerated, since he expects ''tremendous long-term benefits."

''It's a real pungent odor, very thick, and it provides a skim over the water, with a real thick sheen," Jadul said. ''If it rained particularly hard, it would splatter the sheen onto all the boats. . . . We would've welcomed a rotten egg smell at times."

Katheleen Conti can be reached at kconti@globe.com.