New Bedford High School and Keith Middle School
New Bedford, MA

Massachusetts is one of  eight states in the country with laws that offer districts some direction for evaluating site contamination.  Unfortunately, this guidance is often ignored in the face of immediate need for new school facilities.  The following case study illustrates how one school is knowingly being constructed on the site of a former city dump, while another requires remediation for the same reason.

Both New Bedford High School and the site of the new Keith Middle School have sorted histories.  Directly across the street from one another, their polluted pasts are intertwined, sharing contaminants from the same source.  New Bedford High School was constructed in the early 1970’s on the site of the former Parker Street Dump.  Soil excavated during the construction of the high school was deposited across the street on a piece of property previously referred to by locals as “the swamp,” and consequently renamed “the dump.”

Illegal dumping continued at the site for years.  Some 35 years later, “the dump” would become the site of the new Keith Middle School.

In 1994, after years of collecting waste, then-Mayor Rosemary Tierney asked the Army Corps of Engineers to transform the vacant property (“the dump”) into soccer fields.  The site was to be renamed McCoy Field, in honor of Andrea McCoy, an Olympic hopeful boxer from New Bedford, who died in a plane crash in 1980.  No testing for chemical contaminants was conducted at that time.  McCoy Field opened to the public in 1996.  Play continued on the grounds until 2003, despite tests in 2000 and 2001 revealing PCB contamination at low levels.  When asked at a 2005 City Council meeting whether youth should have been allowed to play soccer on the fields after contamination was discovered, an EPA PCB expert responded, “No, that was not advisable.”

Two non-contaminated sites were rejected before the city council chose the contaminated McCoy Field as the site for the new Keith Middle School:  The first because it was too small, and the second because it was too expensive.  The EPA approved New Bedford’s cleanup plan, and remediation efforts of McCoy Field were underway by 2004.  Testing conducted during the first stage of excavation at the site revealed PCB levels at 25 times  the EPA safety standard.  To date, more than 40,000 tons of contaminated soil have been removed from McCoy Field, with total cleanup and site preparation costs estimated at $10 million.  Both the City Council and the EPA are confident that high levels of lead, PCBs, barium and other chemicals can be cleaned up to levels that pose no unreasonable risk to users of the site.  Concerned parents and community members, including the community group Wasted Away, believe the only way to ensure safety at the new school is to remove all of the contaminated soil, an effort that would increase total costs to an estimated $30 million.

In the spring of 2005, chemical testing was conducted in the neighborhoods surrounding McCoy Field in an effort to measure the extent of PCB contamination in the surrounding areas. Low levels of lead, PCBs, barium and other contaminants were discovered beneath the flagpole at New Bedford High School, just across the street from McCoy Field.  Upon discovery of contamination, city officials scheduled cleanup plans for the summer of 2006, saying that the levels detected did not pose an immediate public health risk.  Remediation plans scheduled for 2006 closely mirror actions being taken at the new Keith site, including removal of the most contaminated soil, capping of less contaminated soil, and covering of the cap with 3 feet of clean soil.  No tests were conducted inside of the school, or under any paved areas. If McCoy Field had not been chosen for the site of the new Keith Middle School, harmful PCB contamination at New Bedford High School may never have been addressed.

Community groups continue to fight for proper cleanup of the Keith site as construction of the school continues.  Many concerned citizens feel that leaving any contaminated soil at the site is unacceptable, and poses a risk to students and staff (USEPA, 2005; Nicodemus, 2005).