The Federal government recently brought criminal indictments against the corporation and eight individuals, including Grace's chief legal counsel. The ten counts include charges of conspiracy, Clean Air Act violations, wire fraud, and obstruction of justice.

Grace owns roughly 27 acres of land opposite the MBTA garage at the junction of Routes 2 and 16 in North Cambridge. While much of it appears almost bucolic now, this land has been used in a variety of industrial capacities for many years, including brick making, metal work and a wide variety of chemical processing.

The site was formerly owned and operated by Dewey & Almy, whose product lines included bottle and can sealants, soldering fluxes, and weather balloons. They also manufactured woven and bonded brake linings.

As a result of past industrial uses and problematic disposal practices, the site is contaminated with various metals, chemical compounds and asbestos.

How to deal with the toxic mess left by such activities? Obviously, it’s necessary to carefully survey soil and water conditions, below as well as on the surface, and to monitor those conditions over time. This is called "site characterization."

Here fox, you guard the henhouse

Site characterization activities are currently mandated under the Massachusetts Contingency Plan (MCP) as implemented by the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection (MADEP). This work is overseen by a Licensed Site Professional (LSP), hired and answerable exclusively to the potentially responsible party—in this case, W. R. Grace.

Due to staffing limitations and substantial budget cuts over the past several years, MADEP has adopted a policy of trying to move sites off of their active list. Rather than constantly monitoring environmental protection, MADEP relies on polluter-paid LSPs to manage compliance.

Literally, the LSP hired by the polluter is in charge. And thus effectively, in Massachusetts, environmental protection has been privatized. Oversight has become a burden shouldered mainly by abutting residents—volunteers trying to save their community.

Due to the unusual complexity of the issues, MADEP’s privatization approach is especially troublesome at W. R. Grace’s North Cambridge property.

Years of extensive environmental testing show that the property is contaminated with a variety of metals such as zinc and lead; chemical substances such as hydrochloric acid, naphthalene, high levels of poly cyclic aromatic hydrocarbons; and a wide range of volatile and semi volatile organic compounds.

There is documented proof of the land’s prior use as a car and truck brake manufacturing facility. Yet neither Grace nor Grace’s Licensed Site Professional would acknowledge this. They began to test for asbestos only when challenged to do so by neighborhood pressure in 1998.

Results of preliminary and follow-up asbestos testing verified neighborhood suspicions. Asbestos was detected in dozens of samples at locations scattered throughout the Grace site. In at least one case, asbestos levels were as high as 20 percent and overall levels average a minimum of one quarter of one percent asbestos throughout the property. Asbestos varieties include chrysotile, amosite, crocidolite, tremolite, and actinolite.

A million pounds of asbestos

On a 27 acre site, this level of asbestos represents anywhere from 500,000 pounds to well over a million pounds of loose asbestos fiber bound in the property’s soils. For reasons it has yet to explain in detail, Grace has not been able to describe credibly how much loose asbestos is on its property or how it got there.

Unfortunately, it does not appear that Grace or their hired Licensed Site Professional, Haley and Aldrich, are adequately addressing asbestos threats at this site. While the asbestos presents a minimal danger as long as it remains capped by topsoil or concrete, it is unlikely to remain covered forever.

As demonstrated in the past, Grace will want to develop this large parcel of property or sell it to someone who will.

In fact, several years ago Grace received Planning Board permits needed to develop a 1.2 million square foot office/hotel complex with underground parking. Recently an alternative proposal passed through the Planning Board’s revolving door for a 60,000 square foot superstore with a suites hotel.

However, as if suddenly concerned about public relations prior to moving forward with development plans for this property, Grace now indicates the need to have the asbestos issue settled and off the MADEP’s radar.

The law gives an LSP discretion to attach an Activity and Use Limitations (AUL) to a property deed as a means of protecting public health and the environment.

Grace has applied for an AUL that would minimally limit future activities at the site but would also allow them to carry out development activities without third-party environmental management.

This AUL would be registered with the deed for the property, and any future owner would have to abide by its limitations. MADEP would then essentially halt its oversight of activities at this site, relying on the Grace-hired LSP and the property owner—Grace—to make sure the AUL adequately protects the public from dangerous asbestos exposure. Certain activities, such as major construction excavation, would require specific dust abatement protections but other activities, such as disturbing soil up to six inches deep, would require nothing under the AUL.

Grace admits risk

Interestingly, Grace has conceded in its most recent Response Action Outcome Draft filing that:

"A condition of significant risk to human health potentially exists during a hypothetical, very large scale construction project." (Appendix D, P. 14.2)

In fact, two such projects have already taken place at the site.

The MBTA Red Line Construction and the construction of Alewife Center One were both "very large scale construction projects", involving large numbers of workers who were never informed of the asbestos danger. As of yet there has been no public notification of this exposure made by W.R. Grace.

Cambridge asbestos ordinance

Activities at the Grace site, and any other asbestos contaminated properties in Cambridge, are governed by the Cambridge Asbestos Protection Ordinance, passed unanimously by the City Council in 1999.

Still, having MADEP remain involved and having a strongly protective AUL in place is important for the area’s long-term public health. The asbestos ordinance has been administered in a spirit which falls far short of the original intent of the Cambridge City Council.

At the insistence of Councilor Henrietta Davis and Sam Lipson of the City’s Public Health Office, substantial discretionary authority was built into the ordinance, so that the City's management could effectively undermine it through selective interpretation. Without an independent and involved Health Commissioner familiar with the medical effects of known carcinogens at this and other similar sites, municipal administrators will not keep public health considerations paramount over the influence exercised by developers with long-standing ties to the City Manager’s office.

In addition, the asbestos ordinance is subject to the whims of politics and could be voided or weakened by any current or future City Council, leaving neighbors reliant on the conditions of the AUL and the non-efforts of the MADEP for protection.

Besides abutting a residential area, the W. R. Grace site is adjacent to the popular Linear Park bike path, an MDC pool and a large complex of playing fields and grasslands that draw both adults and children from all over the city.

This recreational area is currently being renovated and will become more popular, and more heavily frequented, than ever. The potential for exposing the public to known carcinogens is significant.

What residents want

Underlying the technical issues of the AUL and the discretionary testing protocols of the City’s asbestos ordinance is the reality that the property owner is W. R. Grace. This is the same company that was found guilty of concealing information relating to contamination at its Woburn site. It is the same company and the same LSP that, despite the site’s previous use as an asbestos processing facility, did not find any reason to test for asbestos in North Cambridge.

This is the same company whose operations decimated Libby, Montana.

In short, Grace is a company that has proven that neither it, nor its LSP, can be trusted to manage this site in a manner consistent with protecting the public from asbestos exposure.

Alewife residents are working with City and State officials to ensure that asbestos protection does not fall by the wayside at the Grace site. Working together, they are hoping to have MADEP remain involved in active oversight.

Residents are committed to keeping the Cambridge Asbestos Protection Ordinance strong enough to provide the public health protections needed to counter the threats posed by properties like the 62 Whittemore Avenue site.

Craig Kelley is a candidate for Cambridge City Council

*UPDATE from The Bridge Troll—in November he won!*

Terminology at a glance

AUL —Activity and Use Limitations – a document attached to a property’s deed warning owners and prospective owners about certain environmental problems and consequent restrictions on the property’s use

LSP —Licensed Site Professional, a person or firm registered with the State to assess hazardous waste sites

MCP —Massachusetts Contingency Plan, the set of State regulations that govern the reporting, assessment and cleanup of hazardous materials

MADEP —Massachusetts Dept of Environmental Protection*, is responsible for enforcing the MCP

Site characterization —a survey of soil and water conditions above and below the surface and the monitoring of those conditions over time