EPA reaches settlement to clean up Superfund pollution site in Windham
Courtesy / ERM
PCB concentrations are depicted on the first floor of the mill.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said Thursday it will raze and remove an environmentally contaminated mill building at a Superfund site in Windham.
A dilapidated, two-story concrete industrial structure at the Keddy Mill site has elevated levels of polychlorinated biphenyls, asbestos, and other contaminants known to pose a risk to human health and the environment.
Under an agreement with ITT LLC, the "potentially responsible party" for the site, the building will be demolished and the contaminated materials hauled away.
Clean-up work is expected to be phased, initially consisting of pre-design investigation activities beginning this year.
“The upcoming building demolition and removal of contaminated materials is an important step in the lengthy process of returning a Superfund site to productive use in a community,” EPA New England Regional Administrator David Cash said in a news release.
The seven-acre property, at 7 Depot St. in the Little Falls portion of Windham, was listed on the National Priorities List of Superfund sites in 2014.
Superfund is a federal program that investigates and cleans up complex, uncontrolled or abandoned hazardous waste sites.
The Keddy Mill site is undergoing a “Remedial Investigation/Feasibility Study” phase to determine the nature and extent of contamination and associated human health and environmental risks. The work will also develop and analyze a range of potentially viable clean-up alternatives.
The site has a long history, with operations beginning in the late 1700s and ending in 1997.
The building that will be demolished and removed was used as a grist and carding mill, pulp mill, box-board manufacturing facility and as a steel mill. Throughout the industrial history, several buildings have been demolished and others added to the mill complex.
The Keddy Mill site is in a mixed commercial/residential area, bounded by Depot Street to the north, a former Maine Central Railroad right-of-way to the east, undeveloped property and the Presumpscot River to the south, and Route 202 and a hydroelectric facility to the west.
The site is largely covered by the industrial mill building, reportedly constructed in the early 1900s. The site formerly contained several other industrial buildings which have since been demolished.
Use of the property for various industrial activities began as early as 1875. Its primary industrial use for metal fabrication began in approximately 1945. The Keddy Mill Co. began its metal manufacturing operation in the 1960s and continued into the 1970s. Through the process of transforming scrap metal into products, electrical capacitors and transformers containing PCBs were utilized.
Initial environmental investigations largely began in the early 1980s. Data collected during these investigations, as well a fuel oil spill, resulted in two cleanups. In 1997, an action to remove nearly 11 tons of petroleum-impacted soil from the north-central portion of the property was conducted in accordance with Maine Department of Environmental Protection requirements. In 2010, a second cleanup removed accessible PCB-contaminated fuel oils in piping and PCB-contaminated sludge, dirt, debris, and oil materials within the buildings.
Most Recent
Most Recent
0 Comments