GREENFIELD — As the Lunt Neighborhood Action Group reported significant delays in its efforts to study contamination at the former Lunt Silversmiths property, the Board of Health plans to conduct air quality testing around the 298 Federal St. site.
“I’d rather do something as a public health regulation, saying ‘It’s our building and it’s perfectly legitimate for us to do our own testing on our building,'” Health Director Michael Theroux said. “It’s better that we require everybody kind of have to go along with it, no matter what, and then at least we know what’s happening in the buildings.”
At Wednesday evening’s Board of Health meeting, Susan Worgaftik and Matthew Perry, who serve on the Lunt Neighborhood Action Group, presented a history of the site’s contamination and cleanup effort.
Worgaftik said that lessee 401 Liberty St., a limited liability company that has active subleases with Behavioral Health Network and Clinical & Support Options, has not yet paid its licensed site professional (LSP). This has delayed the release of the most recent contamination study report, and consequently, the cleanup effort’s ability to obtain state Department of Environmental Protection funding through the environmental bond bill.
“[The contamination study report] was being held and [the LSP] could not release it because they hadn’t been paid. The reason they hadn’t been paid was because [the lessee] didn’t want them to release it,” Worgaftik said. “Now the DEP is being very clear that they are not going to put up with this anymore.”
Former Mayor Roxann Wedegartner previously explained that the city took the property for back taxes not long before 2015. Until 2009, the site was home to a manufacturer of sterling silver spoons, forks, cups and other items.
Questions about the status of the site’s environmental cleanup were first raised in October 2021 when the property was brought before City Council to be declared as surplus and to authorize its sale by the mayor. In particular, there is concern for contamination levels of trichloroethylene (TCE), a toxin that can cause damage to the central nervous system, heart, liver and kidneys, or cancer in humans or animals exposed to it.
“Along the south side of the building, there are storm drains, and we believe there’s runoff going into the storm drains. The storm drains are old, like much of our infrastructure,” Worgaftik explained to the Board of Health. “We don’t know if there are cracks in those drains that are just letting all of this contaminated water go back into the area at Lunt Field or further into the area.”
Although the city hired an LSP, Lyons Witten, to study the site, the Lunt Neighborhood Action Group hired its own LSP, Dan Felten. However, since 401 Liberty St.’s LSP, O’Reilly, Talbot & Okun Associates Inc. (OTO) is listed in MassDEP records as the site’s primary LSP, Worgaftik said the estimated $4 million cleanup project’s progression is at the mercy of 401 Liberty and its LSP.
“I trust that the LSP for the lessee is on the up-and-up,” Worgaftik said. “[The LSP] is kind of in a position where it does what it’s told to do.”
Witten, in a public presentation in June, provided an overview of the most recent groundwater testing conducted in November, and noted that the contamination, namely of TCE, is flowing from the area of Kenwood Street toward Norwood Street.
“Groundwater is flowing from Norwood Street down toward Kenwood Street, and if groundwater is flowing that way, then contaminants are likely also flowing that way,” Witten said. “The laboratory results that are shown on this big plan strongly confirm that the contaminants are moving, at least the shallow contaminants in the shallow groundwater are moving, to the south and southwest.”
Theroux said he plans to draft a statement notifying the lessee that the Board of Health will test the building’s air quality in advance of the board’s next meeting in October. He added that he hopes to also meet with Witten or Felton before that meeting.