Varian Medical Systems spilled thousands of gallons of toxic chemicals on its Beverly site in the 1950s, ‘60s and ‘70s. When the company picked up and left the city, those toxins remained behind, seeping underground into the surrounding neighborhood.
For years, in thick, jargon-laden annual reports, Varian insisted it was actively working to clean up the mess. State regulators and local officials took the company at its word, even as the “cleanup” stretched into its third decade.
It should have been obvious that whatever remediation plan the company was following was not working. But state regulators essentially put Varian in charge of the project, with little to no oversight. Whatever “work” Varian was doing took place out of the public eye, its progress reports going unread and gathering dust on the shelves of the Beverly Public Library.
Today, it should come as no surprise that the so-called cleanup has been a failure.
In November of 2021, after a series of stories in The Salem News, the company finally agreed to test bedrock on its old property to see if it was the source of chemicals spreading into nearby residential neighborhoods. Those tests revealed levels of the cancer-causing chemical trichloroethylene at 600,000 parts per billion. Experts say concerns about indoor air are raised when levels reach 300 parts per billion.
To put it another way, the toxic chemicals were found to be 2,000 times over the level of concern.
Faced with that knowledge, the state Department of Environmental Protection ruled that Varian’s cleanup operation not only was not working, but was also in violation of Massachusetts regulations. Now, Varian is under state order to develop a new plan, one with a deadline of two years to solve the problem. If it doesn’t comply, the company will face stiff fines.
To be sure, the fact that Varian is being forced to truly address the decades-old problem is welcome news, especially for homeowners in the area, many of whom had no idea of the extent of the contamination until reporting by Paul Leighton laid it bare.
But it is sadly apparent that the cleanup should have happened long ago, and Varian’s slow-walking of the work was abetted by lax oversight by the state.
At the heart of the problem is the so-called “licensed site professionals” program, approved by the state Legislature and signed into law by Bill Weld in 1993. The public-private partnership essentially puts polluters in charge of their own cleanup. Businesses hire private contractors called licensed site professionals, or LSPs, to assess and rectify the mess. The state is supposed to check in regularly.
Advocates say the system works by taking pressure off the state Department of Environmental Protection to closely monitor hundreds – if not thousands – of spills ranging from minor gas station leaks to large and complicated sites like the one at Varian.
The system, however, failed spectacularly in Beverly. The November 2021 bedrock testing that revealed the high levels of trichloroethylene was first requested by the city in 2000. Varian pushed back, saying it wasn’t necessary.
That’s 20 years during which the depth of the contamination went unexamined and unremediated.
One of the inherent weaknesses of the LSP system is that it lets companies essentially spend what they want on cleanups. And companies are going to spend as little as possible, regardless of the depth of the problem, in an effort to keep costs down.
Also, state monitoring of licensed site professionals is spotty. The Board of Registration of Hazardous Waste Site Cleanup Professionals is supposed to investigate complaints against LSPs. It is not readily apparent to the public how often that oversight occurs, as the summary of disciplinary actions listed on the board’s website was last updated in 2013.
What’s more, the public has no way of knowing how much effort companies are putting into the work.. Contracts between polluters and licensed site professionals are considered private and not subject to public records laws. Varian could be spending $5 million a year on cleanup, or $5. There’s no way for those affected to know.
It also makes it impossible to know if there are other sites like Varian across the state. Regulators don’t report progress to the public, companies reveal as little as possible, and the public is left in the dark.
The licensed site professional law is close to 30 years old. It’s time for the Legislature to revise it to require regular public updates on remediation efforts, increased oversight of projects by the state, and the opening of LSP contract details to the public.
We do not need another Varian.
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Originally Appeared Here