SHERC Chairman Urges Community to Attend March 8 Meeting on Medfield State Hospital Cleanup

John Thompson, chairman of Medfield’s State Hospital Environmental Review Committee (SHERC), has urged town officials to remain firm in seeking complete remediation of the former Medfield State Hospital site and is now urging the community to take a similar stance.

Thompson is encouraging the Medfield community to attend the March 8 Public Involvement Participation (PIP) meeting at Town Hall with the state’s Division of Capital Asset Management (DCAM) to show unified support for complete remediation of the construction and destruction area (C&D) of the property.

“That would be a critical meeting to attend and to give [DCAM] the message that we [as a town] are concerned about it and we would like to have it cleaned up to the fullest extent,” Thompson said.

At the March 8 meeting, DCAM is expected to present its proposal on how it plans to cap the hazardous waste discovered in the C&D area of the site and armor the bank along the Charles River. By doing so, DCAM’s plans to cap the waste to prevent it from spreading outside of the three and a half acre parcel it currently resides in and contaminate the town’s water supply at Well 6.

SHERC members are not satisfied with leaving hazardous waste on the site and have repeatedly advised the Board of Selectmen to demand the state fully removes the waste from the site, suggesting DCAM’s proposal is driven by the cost of fully cleaning up the site rather than the effectiveness of capping the waste and armoring the bank of the Charles River.

“The cost would be in the millions, probably from $10 to $15 million to remove the material and restore the area … but the state put [the waste] there for over 100 years,” Thompson said. “It now partially intersects our water supply.”

Medfield resident John Harney, who has been a vocal advocate for complete remediation of the property, says simply capping the waste and keeping it on site would be "irresponsible" and put the town's future residents and well-being at serious risk.

"You don't remove a bit of the cancer, you remove all of the cancer," Harney said, referring to DCAM's plan to partially remove and cap the waste in place on site.

Thompson informed the selectmen at its last meeting that if the benefits of a full cleanup at the site outweigh the $10 to $15 million it would take to remediate the C&D area, DCAM would have to comply with MassDEP regulations and fully remove the waste.

“The way the regulations are set up under the MassDEP is if the benefits of a full cleanup outweigh the cost, than you must do a full cleanup,” Thompson said. “We feel this area has potential benefit for both its current use and future use and we feel that benefit outweighs the cost.”

However the town must be able to prove that benefit to MassDEP in order for DCAM to be required to fully cleanup the site, an option the town will have moving forward after it learns more of DCAM's proposal at the March 8 meeting.

In an effort to better understand the town’s other options as it remains in a stalemate with DCAM over the type of cleanup necessary for the site, Thompson recommended the town consult legal counsel on the issue.

“We now have a strong sense that DCAM plans to cap this 3.5 acre parcel and also to hard armor a portion of the Charles River with granite blocks,” Thompson said. “We prefer the material be removed and at this point, we don’t know if technically we can be that effective in arguing them to remove the material. The options left, we feel, are possibly a legal strategy [or] a political strategy with the state to move in the direction of removing this material. We leave it to the selectmen to decide whether or not it makes sense.”

Thompson hopes public support at the March 8 meeting, scheduled for 7 p.m. in the Chenery Room of Town Hall, will provide further evidence to DCAM why it needs to fully remediate the site.  

“If the public feels it is behind us and wants this [hazardous] material removed, the public should show up,” Thompson said. “That’s how DCAM hears we really would like more done than a temporary solution to cap the material and leave it in place because there would be no plan to remove it beyond that.”