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Leather Tannery's Toxic Legacy
The 30-acre tract of the former Mohawk Tannery in Nashua, New Hampshire,
is fenced, and no signs warn of the danger of heavy metals and toxins.
The EPA has alerted residents not to come into contact with soil
on the site, yet local children still enter through gaps in the
fence and ride their bikes along onsite trails. Besides breaks along
the fencing, no barriers whatsoever have been placed around the
southern end of the property.
Nashua Alderman Mark Plamondon of Ward 4 has made it his priority
to turn this public health hazard into a city park as a means of
giving back to a community that has dealt with the pollution and
odors caused by the tannery for 60 years. “My goal,” he
claims, “is to turn brown into green.”
Situated within yards of the Nashua River, the tannery site would
be an ideal location for a park. Instead, six decades’ worth
of leather tanning operations has left both the site and the river
heavily contaminated. Though the tannery has been inactive for nearly
20 years, the site still poses a significant threat to the health
of the community due to the accumulation of toxins such as chromium,
zinc, and phenol.
Throughout its 60 years of operation, the Mohawk Tannery used many
on-site unlined lagoons as disposal areas for toxic chemicals. Two
of the largest are located along side the Nashua River. These disposal
areas are within the 100-year flood plain and have not been constructed
or maintained to prevent the washout of hazardous substances in
the event of a flood. The two largest open lagoons remain filled
with sludge without any barriers or enclosures to protect against
accidental contact with the toxic substances they contain.
The EPA proposed to include the Mohawk Tannery site on the Superfund
priority cleanup list because of presence of chromium, zinc, and
phenol in the Nashua River and the on-site disposal of sludge containing
hazardous substances like chromium, pentachlorophenol, and phenol.
Trichloroethylene was also detected in the sludge and has been discovered
in the drinking water by area residents.
Human exposure to theses chemicals is known to cause liver and pancreatic
damage, diarrhea, and harm to the kidneys, blood, lungs, nervous
system, immune system, and gastrointestinal tract. Skin contact
with chromium alone can cause skin ulcers, and the ingestion of
the chemical can cause convulsions, kidney and liver damage, and
even death.
Listing the old tannery as a Superfund site makes it eligible to
receive funds directly from the National Superfund Trust Fund. While
several years ago this would have been an unquestionably good thing,
today it means waiting patiently in line for the Fund to find the
money. There are 17 other such sites in New Hampshire alone. Since
President Reagan signed Superfund into law in 1985, only the current
Bush administration opposes the polluter-pays fees. The Bush plan
would shift the burden of payment for cleanup to taxpayers.
The massive reduction in funds for the Superfund program has left
our communities and families vulnerable to the national slowdown
in cleanups and listings of the worst toxic waste sites in the country.
It is unclear when and if the funding will be available to make
possible Alderman Plamondon’s goal of reclaiming the site.
The EPA has continued to set this site on the track for National
Priorities Listing to make it an official Superfund site, working
on the Remedial Investigation and Feasibility Study and searching
for funding. The EPA projects that it would take a year to clean
up the site, but exactly when the cleanup would start is unknown—and
none too soon because of the lack of funding. Meanwhile, a committee
of residents and public officials is exploring taking control of
the property and leading the cleanup.
Alderman Plamondon laments, “If we knew that there was a steady
source of funding [in the Superfund Program], I truly believe this
site would be listed—and we would not be making this difficult
decision.”
For Alderman Plamondon, the most pressing concern “is that
this will be brushed under the carpet for a little longer...maybe
with the mentality that Nashua has put up with this for 20 or 30
years, what’s another 10 or 12 or longer? ... That’s my
biggest fear. I would like to see this project given a higher priority
for cleanup.”
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For more information about the challenges facing Nashua, contact:
Catherine
Corkery
Sierra Club New Hampshire Chapter
Chapter
Web site
(603) 224-8222
Nashua Board of Aldermen
www.gonashua.com/aldermen
New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services Health Risk
Assessment Office
www.dhhs.state.nh.us/dhhs/hlthriskassess
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